North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

> Hello,
> 
> Peaches are said to be 85% true to parents from seed.  I assume this would
> be true to all stone fruit.
> 
> Is this assumption true to cherry pits as well?
> 
> Thank you,
> Tom
Peaches don't come true, it's just that almost all peaches are
self-pollinating (exception is J.H. Hale and a lot of it's seedlings, which
have sterile pollen), so the seedlings tend to have a high resemblence to
the parent.  Cross two varieties and the seedlings will show the variation.
Same with other stone fruits.
Sweet cherries have a complicated system of self-incompatibility, so they
don't self-pollinated.  Even so, there is less variation in the outward
appearance of the fruit so that you would have to compare trees to see
variations in yield, fruit size, growth habit, etc. most of the time.
-Lon Rombough