North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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

   I got interested in Rubus chamaemorus, the baked apple berry, one time.
A friend in Sweden sent information from the Balsgard Fruit Breeding
Institute that made them sound like something wonderful.  But the reality is
that they are not suited to easy growing, to say the least.  They take a
dry, gravelly soil, constant moisture, high humidity, and have a really
strange system of pollination requirements.  Not only are there male and
female plants, but there are incompatibility genes as complicated as are
found in sweet cherries.  So you need the exact conditions of soil,
humidity, temperature, and have plants that are pollination compatible
growing near each other to get a crop.  It's not surprising the plants don't
bear heavily.  It's surprising they bear at ALL in the wild.  I had seed
that took over a year to germinate, produced seedlings with three leaves,
lingered for a year, then croaked.
   Oh yes, they don't cross with other Rubus.  Balsgard crossed them with
regular raspberries and all the (few) offspring were sterile.
   It may be possible to find a way to domesticate them, but for now wild
harvested fruit is still the main source.
-Lon Rombough