North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<leclair@verizon.net>]

I have a small apple orchard in Maine and I decided to grow some new trees 
from seed. Now, I'm not looking to grow great or exceptional apples; just 
ones good enough for cider or cooking.  If the trees don't make good apples, 
I'll just top graft them with other varieties.  

Right now, I have a little over a hundred seedlings.  Most of them look like 
average ordinary antonovka rootstock seedlings with small average leaves.  
Some of them have tiny skinny leaves that look like the ones on certain small 
crabapples.  

And one of the seedlings has three cotelydons.  This one is almost twice as 
tall as the average with much larger and broader leaves.  The leaves also 
have much larger teeth than the average leaf.

The third cotelydon folded out from in between the other two "standard" 
cotelydons to form a "Y" shape.  The plant is at about the same stage as the 
rest of the seedlings with about the same number of leaves, etc., except 
everything is larger.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that a standard apple 
tree has 34 chromosomes.

Also, it is my understanding (based on memories of botany class way back in 
school) that one of the cotelydons in a dicot has the genes from one of its 
parents, while the other cotelydon has the genes from the other parent. 

So, if this is the case in this seedling as well as standard dicots, my 
seedling should have 51 chromosomes, the same number that triploids have.  

So my roundabout question is, does three cotelydons make a triploid? 

Also, what are the odds of having good fruit from this tree?

Any info would be helpful.

Thanks,
-Nick