lonrombough (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lonrombough) wrote,@ 2007-11-01 17:28:00 |
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Grapes and Trees
Before I started in grapes, I explored many other fruits. In a class in college in my junior year I did a literature search (the OLD way, pre-internet) and did a presentation on "Wide Hybrids in Tree Fruits". That is, crosses between fruits that don't usually cross. Crossing apples with pears, plums with apricots, cherries with plums, and more. This was all done the old fashioned way, without any sort of genetic manipulation, just by putting pollen of one on the flower of another. You might do several hundred flowers to get ONE seed, it was that hard to make some of these crosses.
One of the side effects of that was to stimulate an interest in collecting and studying varieties of fruits of all sorts. At the same time, I was quite taken with the work of Luther Burbank, who made many such unusual crosses himself. He was the first breeder to make confirmed crosses of apricots and plums, so-called "plumcots". Anyway, I started hunting for varieties of his fruits and collected things like stoneless plums, a white-fleshed Japanese plum, and more.
But many of those have been more or less sitting quietly without having anything done with them as my work with grapes increased. Just so much one person can do. Now I've had a renewed interest in some of them and hope to start trying to work with at least a few of them again. Will anything come of it? I don't know, but I hope to at least spread the plants around and perhaps infect a few other people with the bug to work with them so that they won't be lost.
Stay tuned. I'll still be doing grapes, but I hope to revive at least some of my old work again.
Before I started in grapes, I explored many other fruits. In a class in college in my junior year I did a literature search (the OLD way, pre-internet) and did a presentation on "Wide Hybrids in Tree Fruits". That is, crosses between fruits that don't usually cross. Crossing apples with pears, plums with apricots, cherries with plums, and more. This was all done the old fashioned way, without any sort of genetic manipulation, just by putting pollen of one on the flower of another. You might do several hundred flowers to get ONE seed, it was that hard to make some of these crosses.
One of the side effects of that was to stimulate an interest in collecting and studying varieties of fruits of all sorts. At the same time, I was quite taken with the work of Luther Burbank, who made many such unusual crosses himself. He was the first breeder to make confirmed crosses of apricots and plums, so-called "plumcots". Anyway, I started hunting for varieties of his fruits and collected things like stoneless plums, a white-fleshed Japanese plum, and more.
But many of those have been more or less sitting quietly without having anything done with them as my work with grapes increased. Just so much one person can do. Now I've had a renewed interest in some of them and hope to start trying to work with at least a few of them again. Will anything come of it? I don't know, but I hope to at least spread the plants around and perhaps infect a few other people with the bug to work with them so that they won't be lost.
Stay tuned. I'll still be doing grapes, but I hope to revive at least some of my old work again.
