North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Melissa Kacalanos <mijwiz@yahoo.com>]

Donna,

I'd like to try apios, after all this discussion about it, but it seems that the nurseries that sell improved varieties are sold out for this spring, and only wild-type, unimproved kinds are for sale. What's your LSU cultivar like? How does it compare to the wild ones, which I read can have inconveniently small tubers? If your cultivar is significantly better than those, could I buy a tuber off you? I'd like a tuber from the original plant, not from a seedling, if it's possible to tell the difference.

I know better than to plant it in my garden, don't worry. How much water does it like exactly? There's a squelchy part of my lawn, near a stream, that it might like. I could plant in anywhere from the jewelweed patch, which is quite wet, to the merely damp lawn.

Melissa

--- On Thu, 3/25/10, Kieran and/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net> wrote:

From: Kieran and/or Donna <holycow@frontiernet.net>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] apios americana
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 8:55 AM

Michele, 

     About 13 years ago I got a postcard in the mail that said, "Dear SSE member, would you like to buy some Apios?"  It said they were from the LSU breeding program, and I got 4 tubers for $20.  I certainly got my money's worth.  They have not disappointed us, though at times they have frightened us, much like the sunchokes and the bamboo.  I take that back, they are not nearly as frightening as the bamboo. 

    I am intrigued that someone said they don't make seeds up north.  That implies that Apios is another one of the native food producers that the native Americans took north.  Donna