North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jerry Lehman <jwlehmantree@gmail.com>]

On 10/8/2015 9:09 PM, mark wessel wrote:
> Does anyone know the true parentage of "Geneva Long”. I have read what is 
> easily googled. Some say virginiana x kaki.
Hello Mark,

I have Geneva Long here as well as Geneva red. It is my considered 
opinion that Geneva Long is not a hybrid, unless it is an offspring of 
Rosseyanka. That conical shape is somewhat common in kaki and is also 
common in virginiana.

Prior to the importation of Rosseyanka in 1992 several breeders in the 
US attempted hybridizing the 2 species, kaki and the 90 chromosome 
virginiana. All attempts were unsuccessful. This included Luther Burbank 
which is reported in the Luther Burbank encyclopedia. In it he states 
all his attempts to hybridize the 2 species failed. The encyclopedia 
gave no details as to which varieties or how many of the 2 were used in 
his attempts. Rosseyanka to the best of my knowledge was the 1st 
interspecies hybrid and was accomplished by Dr. Pasenkov (sp?) at the 
Nikita Botanical Gardens in Crimea using embryo rescue and was the only 
one that survived out of 22 rescue attempts, it was originally named 
Rosseyanka 18. But since that time the blockage that prevented previous 
attempts is broken down and all of her offspring can be back bred 
relatively easily to both species. This along with closely looking at 
the leaves leads me to strongly believe Geneva Long is not a hybrid, 
rather pure virginiana. The same holds true for Prok which some believe 
is a interspecies hybrid.

Jerry Lehman