I remember when I was younger, I’d have no hesitation tossing an apple core into a nearby bush if I was walking and neither did any of my friends. Same with peach pits, orange pips, grape seeds and the like. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fruit tree germinating in the wild like a weed. Given how many fruit seeds must be discarded in such a way every year, why aren’t we overrun with fruit trees?
Even given how non-ideal most situations are, just based on the sheer number of fruit seeds discarded every year, it seems like surely some would turn into trees.
People mow their yards. Also, specific disturbed-area plants like blackberries, etc. grow faster, and outcompete fruit tree seedlings that may sprout up.
Birds ate some of the seeds. Some of the trees tried to come up and got mown down. Some just died.
A fruit tree wants some amount of space, and takes years to mature. So if it’s in a thicket, it doesn’t do so well. If it’s out in a clearing, it depends on someone who tends that field wanting it and not just mowing it down.
And I know of several fruit trees that probably came from discarded seeds. There’s one in my parent’s backyard that grew out of their compost pile, and there are wild mangoes everywhere in Costa Rica.
I have a number of “volunteer” citrus trees growing under my mature trees. I even let one grow to the point where it set fruit, to see if I had discovered a new, wonderful variety. Alas, it’s sour orange (as was to be expected - citrus are almost always grafted, and the seeds usually reflect the root stock).
Thank heaven the vast majority do not become fruit bearing trees.
Unless someone is truly dedicated to picking the fruit when it is ripe, fruit trees can be very messy. And often times the only creatures eating the fallen fruit are rats.
I’m a landscaper and here in southern California lots of people have all kinds of fruit trees from stone fruits to citrus, but most of the time the fruit is not picked and it ends up on the ground for the ants, flies and rats.
Seems people would rather go to the store to buy fruit. The romantic notion of growing ones own fruit in the backyard just isn’t worth the effort for a lot of people.
Yeah, I mostly like apple trees, but my neighbors’ big apple tree produces a lot of fruit and it seems like it can get a little stinky. Tart cherry trees are pretty cool, though.
I’m not a botanist, but my guess is “reversion to the mean.” The citrus varieties we all know and love are unique - they are like the Saint Bernard of the citrus world. When the flower from this tree is pollinated, the genes get all mixed up, so what you end up with is much closer to the “generic” citrus, which is sour orange.
I had apple trees in my front yard up until last year. For 8 years I mostly let the apples fall and I mowed over them. Some years didn’t have any apples and I think one year I raked them up. I’m guessing there were many digested by deer and many carried away by squirrels. I never saw a peep of an apple tree in my grass, but I did get little chutes in the mulch. I suspect those were from the roots not the fruits.
I also have a black walnut in my front yard, and now I have 2 black walnuts growing up through the day lillies in the back yard. Stupid squirrels carried the nuts there and forgot about them :-/
I don’t know how it works but grafts and their seeds take on characteristics of the rootstock. This is one way that fruit trees are grown out of their original environment, by grafting a shoot onto a variety that is hardy in the local climate.
When I was a kid, we had several fruit trees in our yard, including a Montmorency cherry tree; this is the sour pie cherry. Most years, we got very little fruit from any of them, but one year, the cherry tree produced a bumper crop and after we gave away all we could, we sold over 100 pounds of cherries to a fruit stand that bought people’s produce.
Those branches were literally bending over to the ground!
I’ll also never forget the warm spell we had in late fall that made our apricot trees bloom. A blizzard put the kibosh on that.
Most fruit seeds of all species are probably eaten by animals, assuming they don’t decay first or never germinate. Many also will not produce a “true” fruit, either, and apples are probably the most notorious for this. Most of those are grafted too. Johnny Appleseed planted those trees to make apple jack.
I have both Mexican Palm (ugly!) and maple trees trying to grow up.
Is every seed in the grocery store fertile? I can’t imagine a professional orchard going to any trouble/expense to pollinate their trees, so are these trees all self-pollinating?
Amazing as it may seem, but it appears the graft and rootstock exchange genes- a kind of horizontal gene transfer. These people grafted a GM plant that fluoresced yellow onto a GM plant that fluoresced green; result; seeds that produced plants that fluoresced green and yellow.
Some seeds need a prolonged cold spell in order to sprout in spring, so if you throw out your apple core in Alabama, the seeds might never sprout. Citrus is one family that doesn’t need this period.
Another problem is that certain diseases are endemic to certain areas. For example, we are riddled with fireblight, and any apple or pear must have resistance bred into its genetics.
That’s not what the article says. The genetic transfer was only in the cells immediately adjacent to the graft site. No mixed gene seeds were produced, the scientists grew mixed gene plants directly from cells.
Most seeds of all types don’t get to grow into mature plants - consider that a single oak tree produces thousands of acorns in a single year, and perhaps millions during its entire lifespan, and yet the number of oak trees in the world isn’t dramatically on the increase.
There is tremendous competition for space and resources to germinate; seeds and juvenile plants are attacked and eaten by other organisms; plants typically produce many seeds in order to stay in the competition.
So your discarded apple core has the odds stacked against it anyway. Despite that, feral fruit trees are out there if you look. Feral apples that bear some resemblance to their cultivated parents can be found in the hedgerows near me (I gathered enough to make cider year before last - here- and I’ll be doing so again soon). I have picked some marvellous feral cherries alongside roadside laybys on country roads where someone must once have eaten a picnic including cherries.
I’ve often wondered why my yard isn’t completely filled with bing cherry sprouts, if not trees. I go through a bag a week or so during the season. The pits are easy to find when planting in the spring since the ground cover is just starting and I’m playing in the dirt. I’ve never seen one that looked like it germinated in any season. They’re almost always intact.