To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Earliest Ripening Apple Mystery
Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 15:25:21 -0500
At 01:58 PM 7/8/2005, S.Sadler wrote:
Is your Quinte a graft? When you graft a mangosteen branch onto rootstock
it still thinks it's a branch and grows sideways - I wonder what other
fruits behave the same?
Stephen,
I have an elderly friend who's been working at identifying and collecting
superior timber-type black walnuts across the Southeastern US for 30 years
or so, and while it's been mostly anecdotal observation on his part, it
seems that for that species - or at least the populations within that
species that he's worked with - that there is a significant problem with
'loss of juvenile traits' - particularly the desirable rapid, upright
growth habit - when topworking scions from an older mature tree onto
seedling rootstocks. It either requires additional pruning/training to get
a good clean bole that would yield a good sawlog or perhaps cutting back
multiple times to induce rapid sucker-like growth that may revert back to a
more juvenile, vegetative style of growth.