North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["robscott@freeshell.org" <robscott@freeshell.org>]

Thanks to all who chimed in on the Prunus americana thread. I submitted
the pre-proposal today, so we'll see what happen.

Quick responses:
Yes I am familiar with Oikos as well as a few other single-trunk,
non-suckering forms available as seedlings, and I would be persuing
soft-wood rooted cuttings of true (16-chromosome) P. americana from a
fire-managed wild stand (somewhere in the tallgrass prairie bioregion).

"Plums on the Prairie" by Rick Sawatzky was a great read on pollination,
hybridization, and native vs. european varieties. It is available at:
www.usask.ca/agriculture/plantsci/dom_fruit/articles/plums.doc
Thanks again, John Bunker, for recommending it.

The novel feature of my research is that it is trying to demonstrate
whether long-lived P. americana rootstocks could be used in a natural
prairie setting for domesticated plum production. This is exciting because
native prairies *self*regulate their soil fertility ... aaand, when local
ecotype P.americana is burnt to the ground (controlled burns are common
in midwest prairies), it resprouts vigorously, growing 10', flowering, and
fruiting within 2 years. This would likely change the
graft-growing-faster-than-the-rootstock stories, and would make for a very
dynamic, self-cleaning ecosystem which could be grafted with different
plum varieties in the same permanent locations over various seasons for
various reasons.

That's *if* my hypothesis is correct.

Rob Scott
Urbana Permaculture Project
Urbana, IL