North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["John K. Fears" <jkfears@mindspring.com>]

The E. pungens (thorny elaeagnus) is not really thorny.  It has recurving,
sort of semi-blunt/sharp hooks (?).  Don't know what purpose those hooks
have except to entangle themselves in all manner of things.  Just try to
pull some small fallen treelimbs from the E. pungens and you will see what I
mean.  In the summer, when you must prune those astoundingly fast growing
shoots that can literally grow 8'-10' in a matter of 6 or so weeks, the
hooks' main purpose seem to be making it difficult to pull out the pruned
shoots.  If you want to really identify your plant, get a good reference
book like Dirr's and have at it.  Don't know a thing about grafting this
plant and am not sure why you would want to.  It fruits prolifically in the
spring but the fruit ripens suddenly and is just as suddenly gone in a week
or less from the local fauna.  There may be others but the E. pungens is the
only one of the family that I know of that blooms in the fall and fruits in
the spring.  Fruits are 3/8"-1/2" thick and about 3/4"-1" long, reddish
flesh as I noted before but with this semi-translucent silvery skin.  Every
year, I usually pick one of the fruits to eat but never am tempted to pick
and eat more than one.
John Fears
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert H." <lostman_amiga@yahoo.com>
To: <nafex@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 7:55 AM
Subject: [nafex] Re: Elaeagnus family (how to approach unknown plants)


> Thank you all for the information. This really encourages me to
> explore this plant more.  On first look I think is the Thorny
> Elaeagnus.  I do remember some small thorns and the plant had
> currently a few fruits on them.
>
> I am still curious about the exploration part of this endevor. If you
> all had the plant, what would be the next step?
> I guess this would be more directed at Hector Black for this
> particular plant, but ask this question for all plant in general.
>
> Would you try a grafting? will it work?
> Should I try hand pollenating and see what seed I get?
> ...or are these the kind of questions that a general horticultural
> degree would answer?
>
> Though I am new at this fruit stuff, at some point I will want to dig
> deeper. I will want to help out the NAFEX and/or Elaeagnus group.
> Walking the same path as everyone else will not add to the knowledge.
>
> I got the plants. Once there established and bering fruit, where do I
> go from there?
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>


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