North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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

Title: Re: [NAFEX] Antique vs. Heirloom

These are good guidelines, generally speaking.  From these, I think we could infer that most older perennial fruits propagated asexually would be antiques.  I still lean towards "heirloom" for those few that are propagated largely from seed, such as certain apricots and peaches.  For instance, there is/was a white fleshed peach with red around the pit, grown as a yard tree, or the like, in Iowa (perhaps other areas, but part of my family came from Iowa, so I use that example) that was always grown from seed.  It was usually called something like Indian Cling or Indian Blood peach.   Anyway, all the trees I knew about were always seedlings.  
    What it really comes down to is that antique and heirloom could both apply (and often are) to many old fruit varieties, but I think, for clarity, there should be some distinction made between ones that are propagated asexually and from seed.  If nothing else, there is going to be some variation in the seed grown types, even if it's not really obvious.  When Tom Foley was head of the NAFEX apricot group, he reported on work by the U. of Wisconsin to identify particularly good individual trees of the Door County apricot.  They found that the 'cots had been grown from seed in enough areas that there were definite variations showing up, either through selection by people, or adaptation to different climates.  If there is that much difference between individuals, it could make a difference where an heirloom came from, while a variety propagated by budding or grafting should be the same no matter where you get the material.
So making some distinction between sexually and asexually propagated material would be useful for someone trying to get the variety.  If you want seed of an heirloom, it's a good idea to get it from a source in a climate as close to yours as possible.  Scions could come from any source.
-Lon Rombough
> From: "Doreen Howard" <doreenh@ticon.net>
> Organization: None
> Reply-To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 10:09:03 -0500
> To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Antique vs. Heirloom

> The following are how vegetables are classified as heirlooms.  The critera
> were developed by Dr. Carolyn Male (heirloom expert), Craig LeHollier (also
> an expert) and Kent Whealy of Seed Savers Exchange.  Also, they refer to
> vegetables as heirloom, and they say fruits and roses are antiques.
> Doreen Howard
>
> Any open pollinated vegetable that was in existence before 1940 when the
> first hybrids were marketed is considered an heirloom.  Open pollinated
> means saved seeds will produce a vegetable identical to the seed donor.
>
> Class I  Open pollinated varieties that were in existence before 1940 and
> were handed down from generation to generation by families, ethnic enclaves
> and regional farmers.  They may have never been available commercially, or
> if they were, their real names have been forgotten and replaced by
> family-oriented ones.
>
> Class II  Open pollinated varieties in existence before 1940 that were
> developed by seed companies and used by farmers and gardeners.  Most of them
> went out of favor commercially when hybrids appeared.
>
> Class III  The open pollinated offsprings of two heirlooms are considered by
> some in the heirloom world to be legitimate heirloom varieties.  Purists
> such as LeHoullier and Male don't recognize them as such, but several seed
> catalogs list tomatoes in this class as heirlooms.
>
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