posted 1 week ago
So lately I've been collecting black cherry (prunus serotina) fruit off the forest floor, at first in amazement that the fruit is still edible and decent quality this late in December, impressed with the size of the fruits. They're not huge about 10mm but that's not half bad for the species.
And I've been thinking the reason they're not cultivated is solely because you can't pick a 50ft tree.
But do they have to be a 50ft tree?
Lots of trees have been dwarfed
And I've been brainstorming steps to achieve my goals.
Option 1
Graft onto dwarfing rootstock. Well prunus serotina is not know to be compatible with anything, at least not outside subgenus padus. There's a report of myrobalan or mirabelle plum on serotina. Maybe cherry laurel would work? Virginia choke cherry?
I saw experimental farm network starting a texas prunus compatibility study which includes serotina. Hopefully they make headway.
Option 2
Trying to trigger the shift from juvenile growth to adult growth by clever pruning methods, increasing nodes, root pruning.
I've seen prunus bonsai with flowers to reaffirm this method
Option 3
Large scale germinating seeds and hoping for something stunted.
Or some combination thereof.
In the meantime I've been collecting seeds, thinking if all this effort is worthwhile with all the other projects I'm interested in
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