An Amazing Tree With 40 Varieties of Stone Fruit. In the Spring Its Blossom Seems to Be Endless!
Can you imagine a single tree with tens of flowers of various kinds of fruit? With plenty of colors to enjoy throughout several months? Although it sounds like a science fiction story, this is already a reality!
A tree of 40 varieties of fruit
The man behind this idea is Sam Van Aken, an artist and a professor of the Syracuse University. Using the process of grafting he creates trees bearing 40 different kinds of stone fruit.
The grafting process is about cutting off a branch with a bud of one variety and connecting it to a tree of another one on the 'main tree'.
Next Aken dresses the wound with a tape until it heals. After some time a new bud forms, which informs Aken that the process has been successful. The whole procedure is very time-consuming and in case of some varieties it can take even up to 9 years.
A work of art
Originally Aken did not mean to create a 'monster-tree' but just a plant with a variety of flowers. Anyway, this is how the tree was created.
The blossoming process is so complicated that the artists creates special diagrams showing when a particular variety can be expected to bloom
They also help him to choose the appropriate variety of the stone fruit tree. At the moment he is creating his plants on a small scale. His trees can be found in Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
