Heirloom trees... [botany]

[Externet]

Hi. 

From what I learned; sowing a seed from a fruit does not imply the new tree will yield an equal 'quality' fruit as the parent produced.  

I think the trees that grow from dropped seeds/fruit naturally germinated in the forests fit the same process as above.  Is that called 'heirloom' ?   Does it mean the naturally germinated trees = heirloom would likely be hundreds of varieties deviating from the parent ?

Does it happen on all plants -say beans, onions, strawberries- or is it restricted to some clade/family/genus...?

Will fruits from these be all equal or same as their parent if all seeds came from same single fruit?

[John Cuthber]

Those trees are almost certainly grown from cuttings.
The word "heirloom" in this context means that they are a very old variety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirloom_plant

Edited November 16, 2023 by John Cuthber

[mistermack]

22 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

Those trees are almost certainly grown from cuttings.

They are, at least the top bit is. 

The root is normally from a different parent, a wild stock that produces vigorous roots. The desired fruit tree upper part is grafted onto the wild root stock as standard. 

[John Cuthber]

The root stocks are also propagated from cuttings- for the same reasons as the  top bits.

I gather that you can graft pears, apples and quinces onto the same tree.

I'd like to know if you can do it with these fairly closely related plants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddleja_davidii

and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddleja_globosa

Because the clash between the  orange and purple flowers would be hideous.

[mistermack]

I doubt if you would have much success grafting a pear onto apple rootstock or vice-versa. It might survive for a while, but I doubt if it would be successful long-term.

I have a friend who has a tree with three or four varieties of pear on one trunk. It's a good idea with pears, because pears typically need another pear tree close by to ensure pollination, as they don't self-pollinate. 

The one that used to confuse me was the Cox's Orange Pippin. I was told that "pippin" meant that the tree could be grown from a pip, but actually, with the Cox's Orange ( the UK's most popular apple ) they are grown from grafted cuttings, just like all the rest of the commercial crop. I think the original Cox's might have been a pippin, and that's how it got the name.

[John Cuthber]

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

I doubt if you would have much success grafting a pear onto apple rootstock or vice-versa. It might survive for a while, but I doubt if it would be successful long-term.

I don't see why it couldn't work.
They commonly use quince stocks for pears
https://www.orangepippintrees.co.uk/articles/fruit-tree-gardening/rootstocks-for-pear-trees

[Peterkin]

5 hours ago, Externet said:

I think the trees that grow from dropped seeds/fruit naturally germinated in the forests fit the same process as above. 

They're wild 'feral' - descendants of cultivated trees - and their fruit will resemble that of a parent that was grafted on, not the rootstock. If the graft was a hybrid, the offspring may be like either of the originals or sterile. The rootstock has no part in the reproductive process. 

5 hours ago, Externet said:

Is that called 'heirloom' ? 

No. Heirloom plants have been propagated through pollination by the same variety for generations. That doesn't mean they were not all grafted onto hardier rootstock: all that matters are the flowers, fruit and seed.

 

5 hours ago, Externet said:

Does it mean the naturally germinated trees = heirloom would likely be hundreds of varieties deviating from the parent ?

No, they would have to breed true in order to be considered a varietal.

 

5 hours ago, Externet said:

Does it happen on all plants -say beans, onions, strawberries- or is it restricted to some clade/family/genus...?

Does what happen? Genetic deviation? Yes, in all species of plants and animals. But these mutations are uncommon, sometimes unnoticeable, sometimes detrimental, sometimes beneficial. Botanists look for the beneficial deviants and use them for pollinators, so as to improve a strain or create a new variant.

3 hours ago, mistermack said:

I doubt if you would have much success grafting a pear onto apple rootstock or vice-versa.

Both would be grafted onto a hardy quince or other specially designed pome fruit tree. Peaches and plums would be grafted onto a suitable stone fruit tree. Yes, you can have several different species on one trunk.

[mistermack]

39 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

They're wild 'feral' - descendants of cultivated trees - and their fruit will resemble that of a parent that was grafted on, not the rootstock.

Only half of their genes will come from the parent tree, the other half will normally come from the pollen that fertilised the flower. That's why seed-grown trees are so unpredictable. 

[Peterkin]

58 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Only half of their genes will come from the parent tree, the other half will normally come from the pollen that fertilised the flower.

That's why I said resemble. It will have some or most or possibly all the characteristics of the grafted parent, depending on where the pollen comes from. It's quite likely to be from an orchard, so it may end up a perfectly acceptable hybrid, or a feral tree, in which case the fruit will be smaller and less regular in shape, but probably the same coulour and similar texture and taste.

In my region of Ontario, we have a lot of apple orchards and a very large number of feral trees along the roadside, in waste spaces, along grazing fields and two in my yard. Beekeepers bring their work-crews to the orchards, and the bees are generous with their favours, not fussy if some blossoms are outside the fence. Some of the ferals, on their own ancestral rootstock do very well for 20-25 years. The yield is generally less than cultivated trees, but usable.   

Edited November 17, 2023 by Peterkin

[John Cuthber]

13 hours ago, Peterkin said:

No. Heirloom plants have been propagated through pollination by the same variety for generations.

I can believe you, or I can believe wiki
" while fruit varieties such as apples have been propagated over the centuries through grafts and cuttings. "

And I know that fruit trees won't "breed true".
 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

And I know that fruit trees won't "breed true".

The commercial varietals won't; the native species do, and stand quite well on their own roots. The definition of 'heirloom' is somewhat nebulous.  https://www.treesofantiquity.com/blogs/news/what-qualifies-as-an-heirloom-fruit-tree

I know more about tomatoes and squashes than apples. Sorry if I mislead or confuse.

[Externet]

48 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

The definition of 'heirloom' is somewhat nebulous. 

Clearly foggy.  So the image at post #1 can be any root that received a 'feral' or 'ancestral' grafting.  Or can be a natural never-grafted grown up germinated from a forest unattended tree, or rooted twigs from an undefined backyard tree, or can be whatever the seller thinks correspond to the name 'heirloom' .

+1

Edited November 17, 2023 by Externet

[Peterkin]

57 minutes ago, Externet said:

or can be whatever the seller thinks correspond to the name 'heirloom'

Well, not quite. True, regulation is even more lax than for "organic" designation. But there are guidelines, issued by horticultural societies and some ministries of agriculture, regarding marketing claims. Mainly, it's about how long the varietal has remained unchanged.

The definition and use of the word “heirloom” to describe plants is fiercely debated. One school of thought places an age or date point on the cultivars. For instance, one school says that for heirloom seeds, the cultivar must be more than 100 years old, but others say 50 years, and others prefer the date of 1945, which marks the end of World War II and roughly the beginning of widespread use of hybrid seeds by growers and seed companies.

The odd thing is, that usually applies to annuals - vegetables and flowers. Sixty years in a line of cucumbers is 60 generations.

For a tree fruit, it wouldn't be no more than two or three generations. Horticultural societies will insist on a certain number of generations, regardless. It takes three to five years just to find out whether a seedling bears fruit at all. Grafts are much faster and more reliable: the new sapling is not an offspring at all, but the same tree, indefinitely, colonizing another species' or varietal's roots.  

[John Cuthber]

Here's a list of varieties produced from Cox's orange pippin which were obtained by breeding them with other varieties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox's_Orange_Pippin#Descendant_cultivars

One example is

Allington Pippin (Cox's Orange Pippin × King of the Pippins)
But it's important to realise that, if you fertilised flowers of one with the pollen of the other and grew the pips there's still no guarantee that the seeds would grow into anything like the Allington Pippin for essentially the same reason that you and your brother or sister are not identical.

Apples (and a lot of related fruit) are self-incompatible.

You can't get seed from a Cox's orange Pippin without crossing it with another variety.
So you can't raise them from seed.

If native varieties all bred true there wouldn't be any cultivated varieties.

7 hours ago, Peterkin said:

For a tree fruit, it wouldn't be no more than two or three generations.

If you are growing commercial apple trees there are no generations.
There are no seeds; it's all cloning.

And that's where we get the word "clone" from
 from Greek klōn ‘meaning twig’.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by John Cuthber

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

If native varieties all bred true there wouldn't be any cultivated varieties.

Why? Humans interfere with everything. No matter how well nature is working, humans want something better. Most cultivated varieties are hybrids - from seed, either sterile or throwbacks to one of the ancestors.

If native species didn't breed true more often than they mutate or cross-breed, there wouldn't be any apples for people to mess around with. Whatever the characteristics of modern commercial apples, there had to be tree somewhere in the past that didn't go extinct for lack of another variety of its kind nearby.  

 

2 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

If you are growing commercial apple trees there are no generations.
There are no seeds; it's all cloning.

Yes, of course it is. Who did all the budding and grafting before Eve took that first fatal bite?  

 

[John Cuthber]

It's not a bad bet that the original apples were similar to what we call crab apples.
If they always bred true then they would still be crab apples.

It's important to distinguish the level of "sameness" that people seem to want in apples from that which they would get in nature.
For a lot of things, plants which are effectively siblings are close enough, but for our apples we want identical twins. There's a half-way house where we grow F1 hybrids for use.

So, for millennia our ancestors chose the biggest sweetest apples and in due course those apples' seeds were "planted" near human habitations (and well fertilised too).
So the treed that grew from them were biased in favour of big sweet apples and the offspring were subject to the same sort of pressure.


No need for Adam or Eve to understand genetics.
Once we started farming, we deliberately chose seed from plants that we liked.
But we discovered that apples don't breed true and they take ages to grow so it's a slow process to take pot-luck.
We found it's much more efficient to clone them.