North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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

At 10:10 PM 12/2/2004 -0500, Jerry wrote:
> Regarding high or low
> grafting of Che, Chris Inhulson, Montezuma, GA wrote in the current issue
> of Southern Fruit Fellowship:
>
> I have had the privilege of touring AJ Bullards fruit and flower planting
> on two occasions and both times I was impressed with his huge Che tree.
> On close inspection I saw that he had grafted the Che high on another
> member of the Moraceae family, the Osage orange, Maclura pomffera, also
> called Bois d'arc.
> I was advised at the time that this Osage orange did not sucker and so
> would lend itself well to a rootstock for its cousin, the Che. Grafting
> high, three to five feet to be exact, was also important because of the
> prominent drooping habit of the resulting Che branches. Lastly I was
> advised that it was necessary to graft not only female, but also male
> varieties to reliably produce fruit.
>
> Well, as stated, I was impressed ...yet not enough to do anything about
> grafting any trees of my own--the memories of the thorny suckers were
> simply too fresh...and besides, where was I going to find a graftable
> Osage orange?

Here's a discourse on Che that Richard Moyer posted several years
ago:
"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."

Clifford England emailed me about encountering a big, old Che tree near
an experimental jujube planting somewhere near a TVA dam in eastern
KY.  His experience with the fruit was that it must be fully ripe to
be edible - he tried some that were not ripe yet, and experienced an
astringency that he said 'caused his mouth to dry up, and his throat to
close down'.  
With regard to some of the discussions recently on edibility/poisonous
properties, I wonder if Cliff's experience was due to the fruit not being
ripe, or to some idiosyncratic reaction he personally had to some
compound in the fruit.  Seems like I've seen references to some
people having an allergic-type reaction to the milky, latex-like sap of
figs and mulberries - since Cudrania is in the same family, perhaps this
would extend to that species as well.

Lucky