Arnould Nazarian

Last year, 2018, was an exceptionnal year for fruits in Western Europe, including for sorbus domestica, eg see the video in this link about a huge tree in Marmoutier, Alsace, France, which lost a branch due to the heavy weight of the fruits :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRgheRUZL9U

At 27 seconds into the video the girl explains that the fruits are not edible, if you try them in this state, your mouth will remember them for at least 1/4 of an hour. At 35 seconds you can see fruits that look like they are rotten. In fact they are "blet" ie overripe. They are soft with a beautiful yellow color inside and full of sugar with an incredible taste (incredible because new for us, modern population). I eat them like the girl at 38s without the skin, but I think the skin could be eaten as well. And yes, in this village people know the value of those big trees and the tree with the broken branch was healed as well as possible. At 1mn Antoine shows some eau-de-vie de cormes, he seems to regret the old times when this had at least 52 degrees of alcohol vs now 45 degrees only...

Now the good news is that there are fruits again this year, in 2019, so there will be enough seeds !

Do not give up too soon, maybe you will get something in a few days, or even next spring,

Yes rarely enough fruits that were not eaten by animals can bring the seeds to germination, but it is very unusual and nobody knows why. This behavior is completely different from plums, cherry.. but quite similar to apple, pear, quince, medlar. About 3 weeks ago I visited the biggest sorbus domestica tree in a park inside of the borders of Paris, totally unknown from the general public so only a handful of people visit it. Lots of fruits last autumn, no animals to eat them, lots of baby trees this spring. But it is the first time I see this.

The general strategy of these rosacea trees to disseminate is to deliver their fruits to be eaten by animals, and only after digestion some of the seeds can sprout. 2 advantages: young trees can grow very far away from the parents. And animals only choose the best fruits, so they improve the quality of the fruits for the future generations of trees and animals.

You may know that the geographic origin of the apple trees was found during the 20th century. It is a big forest of apple trees somewhere in south Russia/north China only visitable with horses. Bears did disseminate and improve those apples for many thousand of years. A woman here in France who was there says that among those millions of apple trees some deliver apples with unknown tastes, and there are no diseases at all. She produced a film about this. But not enough money to study them and graft the best of them. She hoped that Steve Jobs could have helped, but stock holders of big multinational companies have other priorities than to prepare a better world for their children.

Agreed I am very pessimistic about the future. One of the reasons I am interested in sorbus domestica is following. In France, year 1709 was catastrophic from the climate point of view. At least a couple of hundred thousand had to starve to death because of very bad harvests. But the literature says that sorbus domestica trees did deliver fruits, and some peasants who had such trees could survive because of them. I have never found the original text though...

Ok back to topic: don't throw your experiments with sorbus domestica seeds away yet ! I for one will keep them until next year to check.

Hello Judith and Miles,

Now that I know that it is neither difficult nor expensive to send post to the US, I will resend some seeds in next fall.

In fact I am terribly sorry. I did exactly the same as you did, with exactly the same seeds that were "stratified" inside the fruits on my balcony during last winter. I planted the seeds on April 7th. And as of today I have nothing. I am really confused about this. I thought that it would work, and it seems that it is a failure

To see pictures of the seedlings in order to recognize them, once again a good place is instagram.

Here the seeds just germinated, some seedlings still have the 2 cotyledons covered by the hard brown skin of the seed : https://www.instagram.com/p/BxRiJsKACfZ/

Here you still see the 2 round shaped cotyledons and the first 2 leaves in a state maybe 2 weeks after above: https://www.instagram.com/p/BvrhwGDBy-1/

And here the same one month later : https://www.instagram.com/p/BxBDK8kg3WA/

In this state they are VERY fragile. They only begin to build wood in the middle of the summer.

After 4 years it is still difficult for me to choose when exactly to repot them. 2 years ago after I discovered that in fact one should use pure sand, I did not repot 4 of them and left them in the sand until next winter. Strangely it did not harm, they survived.

Thus nowadays, if I had enough space, I would collect plastic bottles (it is free and so they would not end in the see...), cut off the top, drill small holes underneath, fill up half with ground at the bottom and half with sand at the top, put 1 or 2 or max 3 seeds into the sand, not very deep, and forget them in a cool place during the winter (should not become too dry of course). This way it would not be necessary to manipulate the seedlings during 1 or even 2 years, until they would be strong enough. But this means having quite a lot of space, or do only a very limited quantity...

Nitrogen fixer like robinia, an invasive tree here in Europe? No, I really don't think so. In the beginning, because robinia, I thought that there were true service trees everywhere. But I soon learned the differences! And I can confirm, true service trees are very rare.

AFAIK in France, to do some eau-de-vie by yourself you have to pay taxes twice. First you must own or maybe lend a real "verger" , an orchard, which is more expensive than other land. Then you must pay for what you produce. If both conditions are true then you can produce 10 liters at a "bargain" price for yourself.

For those reading french there is a book still commercial about true service trees (click on "voir l'ouvrage"):

http://www.sepenes.fr/pages/page-12-arbrescormier.html

The author organises a conference about sorbus domestica in Dancé, département Orne, salle des fêtes, at 2.30pm, Saturday 25. November 2017. I will be there.

And for those reading german, there is also a book about sorbus domestica, it is now a free .pdf file (click on "hier"):

http://www.foerderkreis-speierling.de/content/speierling_pflanze.php

Hello David,

To pick the fruits on the trees is not the proper way to get them. When they fall, the fruits are still very hard and full of tannins. I never saw any animals or humans eat them just after they fell, unless there is no wind for days and days and they blet on the trees. In fact I believe that tannins at high levels are a poison, and that is why the fruits are always good and never attacked by animals when they fall.

Once the fruits fell on the ground, they should be picked up at least every 2/3 days. Then they must be stored for about one week with absolutely no need for low temperatures, on the contrary, they can be kept a little bit longer in the fridge. After a few days but rather sooner than later the fruits change colour, they become brown and soft, but inside they keep a very pleasant yellow colour. They must be sorted out every couple of days because some blet faster than others. It is a race.

At this point you are rewarded as they are excellent to eat raw, or to transform into marmelade, cider, eau-de-vie, to dry etc... In fact with sorbus domestica fruits you can do all the same as with apples or pears, but within about a 2/4 weeks time frame only. And that is one of their main drawbacks, maybe the reason why they were displaced by apple trees. However today the pulp can be extracted and deepfrozen to be transformed later during (cold) winters (there is some 70% of pulp in the bletted fruits). That is exactly how Sylvie does it for the second year:

https://www.entreboisetvergers.fr/

If interested there are other suppliers of marmelade made of true service trees fruits in Germany (google Speierling Marmelade).

Hello Miles, I've seen your PM, no problem.

Litterature says that true service trees were brought to northern part of Europe by the Romans. They are adapted to quite dry and hot climate. I have seen pictures of true service trees in Spain were it is the only green spot around. But my experience is that it also very much likes good soils and water. I have found a tree in a park in the surroundings of Paris that delivers the biggest known fruits in the world to date (see the picture above, the 15 fruits on the balance). This particular tree grows near a pond, maybe only 1m above. The point is that in a dry environment the slowly growing true service trees have less competition for light.

But if it is warm enough from the second half of may to august to build fruits true service trees also support cold climates.

Here visakoivu has true service trees in the Black Forrest, Germany, at an altitude of about 600m.

http://www.greffer.net/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2696&start=57

Here on the picture the comment says that it is a true service in the highest village of France at an altitude of 2040 m. That tree is certainly oriented towards south and protected from north winds. I hope I'll find it some day because I am not completely sure that it is a sorbus domestica, could be an error and be a sorbus aucuparia.

http://www.greffer.net/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=368&start=43

Here more pictures of true service trees in the Alps (wikipedia indicates min altitudes for Fouillouse = 599 m and Champcella = 900 m) :

http://www.florealpes.com/fiche_cormier.php

And last but not least another true service tree planted in 2000 not from a seed but from a portion of roots after the old tree was thrown down by a storm in december 1999. The articles say that the original tree came from Russia in the 50's for an experiment to select fruit trees to be planted in one of the coldest places in Germany. Obviously it grew well, and the new one also grows very well at an altitude of about 700m. The picture shows my mother indicating 2m height in october 2016. That tree had some fruits, but on October 12th they were still green and very hard.

https://www.suedkurier.de/region/schwarzwald-baar-heuberg/niedereschach/Exotischer-Baum-fuehlt-sich-in-Niedereschach-wohl;art372527,6440628
http://www.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/inhalt.niedereschach-seltener-baum-waechst-im-neubaugebiet.61f922d7-b19e-4653-8d78-d448aa2f6bdc.html

I have to add something because it was not clear.

Arnould is obviously my first name. "Cormier" is the name of this tree in most of France. In south of France the few who still know this tree can use the name "sorbier" instead.

Most of the people named Cormier in North America are descendants from a carpenter who moved there in mid 17th century see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cormier_(colonist) . There are thousands of places named after this tree in France, and thousands of people as well. That shows how important it was until about 150 years ago. I believe that during the european Middle Ages it was one of the most important fruit trees with meddlars and quinces (apples were imported during Renaissance). Also to mention: Europeans started mechanics with hard wood, the first choice was sorbus domestica for the screws in wine/oil presses as well as gear teeth in mills (what gave them time to conquer the world, but this is another story).

As I live near Paris in the northern part of France I use the name "cormier" for this tree. So if you search "Arnould cormier" in internet you will find a few dozen comments on forums and blog articles from me about this tree. But in French, that is.

Why I do that? Some fish, some visit museums, I look for sorbus domestica and all the informations I can find about it. It is interesting enough or I would have stopped years ago

Hello,

I have a lot of seeds for sorbus domestica. How I got so many is a long story. They come from a place where there are 4 trees, the fruits were beautiful, the seeds are really pretty. You can try to private mail me, I do not look at this email every day, but well... For more comments on this tree, albeit in French, google "cormier Arnould". I hope to start a blog about this tree, hopefully this winter. If I get enough time, I plan to do it in French + German + English.

I just saw that I gave the wrong URL about Luther Burbank's sorbus domesticas. Here the right one (I wonder why it so difficult to find):

https://sites.google.com/site/westsonomactyhistoricalsociety/farm-walking-tour/9

Some more informations about germination of sorbus domestica seeds.

A year ago I wrote about the same informations as Philip in French on this site, with a number of pictures:

http://www.greffer.net/discussion//viewtopic.php?t=368&start=157

Interesting is that it is possible to place the seeds in small holes filled with sand directly in place, if winter is cold enough, they will germinate, if not they could come the following year. Do not dig a big hole filled with good humus as this would be perfect for mice to colonise. The trees will be strong enough to build roots in any type of soil. These trees will never be shocked by transplantation, but they must be protected against attacks by mice and grass eating animals like Philip explained.

Then there is this document in english from one of those interested people in Central Europe (if you google the name of the author you will see that she deals with sorbus domestica for many years):

http://www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/166854.pdf

The trees will produce fruits about 15 years later. In 100 years they could deliver up to 1000 pounds of fruits every year, about the same as old big pear trees. I think that the trees in Sebastopol deliver 2 to 4 tons of fruits per year...