Wapsi Square Forum

FreeFlier wrote:AFAIK a few of the fruit tree cultivars need a different cultivar for pollination!

Commercial apples (most common varieties of apple, except crabapples) can't even directly reproduce via seeds. Their seeds, if fertile at all, produce crabapple trees. To get a new tree of any other variety you have to start a crabapple seedling, graft in a branch from a tree of the desired variety, and then when the graft takes hold get rid of the crabapple branches.

Warrl wrote:

FreeFlier wrote:AFAIK a few of the fruit tree cultivars need a different cultivar for pollination!

Commercial apples (most common varieties of apple, except crabapples) can't even directly reproduce via seeds. Their seeds, if fertile at all, produce crabapple trees. To get a new tree of any other variety you have to start a crabapple seedling, graft in a branch from a tree of the desired variety, and then when the graft takes hold get rid of the crabapple branches.

No, it doesn't necessarily revert to crabapple, but you don't know what you're going to get . . . most seedlings are inferior, but every now and then something special shows up. (My mother's house has three seedling trees - two apple and one cherry.)

Many places - largely universities, fruit grower's associations or similar places - crossbreed fruit trees to try to come up with something new and superior.

Commercial growers do reproduce their fruit trees by grafting, but that's so they get exactly what they want every time.

--FreeFlier