North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

In response to Pete's query about Che fruit, I dug up the following 
response out of my archived NAFEX files - in this case a response from 
Richard Moyer to a question posed by Mark Blossom.

On another topic, has anyone heard from Richard lately?


> Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 17:18:48 EST
> From: <ramoyer@king.edu> (Richard A. Moyer)
> Subject: RE: [nafex] Chinese Che
>
> We have had Che fruit in for 7 years.  Putin both a male and female 
> plant.  Survived 14 below several winters ago.  Blooms after frost; has 
> not frozen out in five or so years (am away from my notes), unlike our 
> mulberry.  No observed disease or insect problems.  Birds are a problem, 
> have netted the female.  Disease and insect resistance similar here to 
> mulberry and fig, which are in same family (Moraceae).
>
> Pollination is the adventure with this plant:
> The male sets fruit but most of these fall off; a few of them will ripen 
> and be identical to female fruit.  Male died to ground two winters ago; 
> the female still set a full crop of seedless fruit.  The male grew back 
> last year, bloomed thisyear and acted like a female by setting the largest 
> crop of ripening fruit yet.  (It may be in the process of some type of 
> conversion; time will tell.)  Some debate has gone on for the need of a 
> male pollinator.  I'm not sure that I had any less fruit without the male 
> two years ago.  Our plants are on the far side of the field and hence do 
> not merit close observation; my kids eat most of the fruit with the birds.
>
> Both our plants are grafted onto Osage Orange.  Hence, if you know how 
> Osage Orange does on yours or similar land, this should suffice for your 
> site.  A.J. Bullard let a single stem go up to 8-9 ft, and cuts all others 
> off, he has a nice form as the result.  A number of our limbs on our bush 
> are on the ground.
>
> Hidden Springs grafts theirs onto Osage Orange if I recall correctly; they 
> do not grow seedling trees of Che.  If you mean they graft an unnamed 
> "seedling", they then are no different from any other nursery, to my 
> knowledge.  Don't know of anyone who has selected and named superior 
> cultivars from the wild (somewhere in China?)  My impression of the one 
> nursery that sells a seedless selection is that this if merely a 
> female.  My sample size is too small to determine the value of two for 
> pollination vs. one female.
>
> We are at 1800' zone 6, we rarely get into the 90s; we are on the 
> borderline for enough heat to ripen Che fruit.  In a cool summer, 
> defoliation in fall will occur before last of fruit is ripe.
>
> Ripe fruit has a strawberry color, knotty exterior like Osage Orange, 
> tastes a bit like pear and fig to us; sweet but not overly so.  Strange in 
> that slightly unripe fruit leaves a metallic taste in my mouth.
>
> In summary, an overlooked minor fruit.  Well worth the effort to put in as 
> a carefree, dependable producer in our area.  The Blacks at Hidden Springs 
> have made a jam with them.  Lee Reich plans to include a chapter on this 
> plant in his second edition of 'Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention'.
>
> Richard Moyer
> East Tenn