North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[R F Hollaus <hollaus@comcast.net>]

Jerry stated this about Lon Rombough:
>Another thing to mention: his wild stock of Pyrus betulifolia is very 
>special in that 
>it's a particularly cold-hardy strain; he was, if I recall correctly, 
>planning on working 
>with these - I hopefully can find my notes where I wrote on what Lon was 
>doing 
>with it.  Unfortunately, he never finished (went back to) working on a book 
>on 
>persimmons that I said I'd like to contribute in working on. 
/END OF CLIP/

This collection is hardy. I crossed and came up with a batch of seedling 
hybrid with OHxF-513 as the female parent. These hybrids survived some very 
low winter temperatures in Fairbanks Alaska where I have a garden. They would 
still likely be alive today had my nefew controlled the high weeds so 
eventually they smothered out and in the mean time they survived at least two 
winters. 

Lon didn't really do much other than give seeds away. There is so much 
variation in every one of over a dozen seedlings he has. Several years ago he 
let me graft 'magness' pear scions to each of them. Magness is pollen sterile 
which is the only reason he would allow me graft them. The reasons being that 
he would unable to continue as he has to give away pure bred types if any 
pear pollen was around. They do bloom in the same period. 

Of all the betulafolia stock I'm after one of them as it looks rather 
promising as a dwarf and thus far the best of all to push growth into the 
pear scion. 

Rupert.