Malus sieversii (apple's wild ancestor) at the Cornell Orchards (Ithaca, NY)

Hello,

some of you may or may not be aware that folks from Cornell have gone on multiple expeditions to Asia, to the area where Malus domestica originated.  They've collected seed from Malus sieversii and have some planted trees.

If I were anywhere near NY state, I'd go collect some budwood or seed and have some for yourself (and the forum  ). 

wikipedia:
"Some, but not all, of the resulting trees show unusual disease resistance. The variation in their response to disease on an individual basis is, itself, a sign of how much more genetically diverse they are than their domesticated descendants."

I did the googling the other month and I'm not aware of any other source of this germplasm in North America..

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Malus_sieversii
http://hort.cals.cornell.edu/cals/hort/about/about_orchards.cfm
http://hort.cals.cornell.edu/cals/hort/about/cornell_orchards.cfm
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pubs/press/germplasm.html old article from '96 about collecting the germplasm.  i think they've been back a few times since then.

  Thanks for telling me about this! After reading this article I contacted these people and got them to send be seeds! . Apple breeding, here I come!

good to hear! i dont even have my own land so there's not much point in acquiring germplasm.

maybe you can find info online, but i can try and recount how to do mass breeding if you really want to search hard for varieties with certain qualities.

if anyone else is reading this, the folks at cornell are supposed to be really friendly, just be polite and professional. 

you should be able to pick out gemrplasm listed here, and search based on specific qualities.
www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/

different groups hold different germplasm, so it can vary how easy it is to get anything.  but cornell has m. sieversii and ive heard first hand accounts of it being do-able.  also from what i've heard there is a sort of deadline in the winter that you have to request it by, or you have to wait for a year, anyway, good luck!

I found 2 places selling these.

http://www.speciestrader.com/Malus/buy-Malus-sieversii-for-sale.html

http://www.orangepippintrees.com/crab-apple-trees/malus-sieversii

I'd like to use a number as root stocks and let some grow to natural form. Seems like these would be more popular since it's a threatened species.

Kirk Hutchison wrote:   Thanks for telling me about this! After reading this article I contacted these people and got them to send be seeds! . Apple breeding, here I come!

Kirk, I know this is an old post but I'm wondering if any of the seeds took.  If they did I would be interested in purchasing some seeds from you.

Regards, Scott

Hi Scott,

I was one of those lurkers who was inspired by this OP. Back in fall 2013 I contacted Cornell University and requested seeds. I stratified 10? seeds in my refrigerator that winter, but after that I'm ashamed to say I pretty much did everything possible to try to destroy them. I left the sprouted seeds in the care of my sister's ex-boyfriend while I lived abroad for a year. When I returned, I planted the coddled seedlings with no protection on property with a resident deer herd. I thought they were definitely goners, as the deer ate them down to nubs. However, they were back again the next two years for a new level of abuse - droughty summers with no irrigation (remember the 50+ days of no rain, PNWers?). I was again out of the country for a month, and left the poor seedlings to fend for themselves. As of August 2017 they were still surviving! Unfortunately I forgot to take pics before the leaves fell off, but I did find these pics from 2014, when they were still in pots.

The rest of the seeds (they sent me a 'small' sampling of 100!) have been in my refrigerator for 4 years. I'm going to stratify some this winter, to hopefully sprout in spring, but I've learned since then that refrigerators really aren't the best place to keep seeds, so we'll see. I'll keep you posted on the seeds and the seedlings come spring.

So, I went to take a picture and I forgot to mention....the weeds. This is a little embarassing...

It's hard to tell, but there are actually at least 4 Malus Sieversii in this picture. One in the front with one little leaf on top, back to the right with several stalks, straight back with one long stalk, and back left with 2 skinny stalks. Last I checked there were actually 5 of these, but I can't find the last one, hopefully it will pop out in spring.

Now, they are very SMALL (18 inches tall). However, I believe that is from the neglect, because back in 2015 one of the year-old seedlings was about 2-3 feet tall. I'm hoping that a new location with amendments and regular irrigation will work wonders.

Rose Lee wrote:Hi Scott,

I was one of those lurkers who was inspired by this OP. Back in fall 2013 I contacted Cornell University and requested seeds. I stratified 10? seeds in my refrigerator that winter, but after that I'm ashamed to say I pretty much did everything possible to try to destroy them. I left the sprouted seeds in the care of my sister's ex-boyfriend while I lived abroad for a year. When I returned, I planted the coddled seedlings with no protection on property with a resident deer herd. I thought they were definitely goners, as the deer ate them down to nubs. However, they were back again the next two years for a new level of abuse - droughty summers with no irrigation (remember the 50+ days of no rain, PNWers?). I was again out of the country for a month, and left the poor seedlings to fend for themselves. As of August 2017 they were still surviving! Unfortunately I forgot to take pics before the leaves fell off, but I did find these pics from 2014, when they were still in pots.

The rest of the seeds (they sent me a 'small' sampling of 100!) have been in my refrigerator for 4 years. I'm going to stratify some this winter, to hopefully sprout in spring, but I've learned since then that refrigerators really aren't the best place to keep seeds, so we'll see. I'll keep you posted on the seeds and the seedlings come spring.

Rose Lee,  Thanks for the information.  Sounds like a thumbs up for hardiness.  Keep me posted.

This is the best of the 5 malus sieversii, about waist high. I must have mistaken it for another kind of tree before, but now that they are budding out it definitely is the same as the other 4.

So amazing to see a completely natural, ungrafted growth habit on a fruit tree! I can't wait to see it leaf out this year...I wonder when it will have blooms?

I stratified 16 more seeds this year, but I left them in the back of the fridge and they froze! (I couldn't even open the paper towel they were in.) I thought I had killed them, but so far, 5/16 seeds have radicles!

Rose Lee wrote:I stratified 16 more seeds this year, but I left them in the back of the fridge and they froze! (I couldn't even open the paper towel they were in.) I thought I had killed them, but so far, 5/16 seeds have radicles!

Nice!   I didn't end up getting any of these seeds.  We did an orchard run this year and I stratified fifteen seeds in the fridge.  13 of the seeds are on their second set of leaves.  Couldn't believe how easy apple seeds sprouted.  I did two other types of fruit with no luck so far.

Hi greetings from Portugal,

Interesting to read the posts. I’m curious about how your Malus Sieversii are growing now.

Is there maybe someone who can help me to get Malus Sieversii seeds to let them grow and spread new seeds arround over here?

Looking forward to your reply.

I suspect this is limited to US people, but here's a big quote from an email I got from ARS-GRIN after requesting stock of M sieversii. I can't find a web-page to point you to, it seems they do it all by email.

Below you will find information about our program involving the wild malus sieversii seeds from our work that you may have read/heard about in the popular book "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World" by Michael Pollan, the Documentary: http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/ or the Nov. 21, 2007 NY Times article (Stalking the Placid Apple's Untamed Kin) By HAROLD McGEE): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21curi.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin

For those looking for educational materials on this program you can go to the following website:



http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/lesson-plans.php



Back in the late 1990’s, our former apple curator Phil Forsline collected apple seeds from the wild native species in Kazakhstan.  Original seed from Kazakhstan is reserved for use by scientists doing genetic research. However we can supply open-pollinated (O.P.) seed from our grow-outs which are in a somewhat isolated area and these would be a blend of all genes from many sites in Kazakhstan.  This site contains over 1000 trees of Malus sieversii and most of these trees have produced seed since 2001. We do not have any trees to send out. We can send a small seed lot that you will need to germinate (see the section at the end of this message from our Procedures manual on how that is done).



We have received numerous requests since Michael Pollen’s book was published. Fruits from the grow-out site were collected in the fall of 2001 to 2014 and we extracted seeds. We have sent about 100 seeds per requester (open-pollinated) from at least 4 different mother trees that represent diverse ecosystems in Kazakhstan.  

Therefore, for those requests coming in now, they will be kept on file.  We will start sending seed orders toward the end of October, 2019. You will need to stratify the seeds for 3-4 months (see procedure below): Start the stratification process in November/December 2019; start seedlings indoors in early spring, and plant in the field Spring 2020.



If you are interested, we will send your order in fall/winter 2019/2010. Please contact me if you are interested in the above scenario. I will need your mailing address.



Sincerely,

Dawn Dellefave
dawn.dellefave@usda.gov

I've gotten two batches of 100 seeds from the USDA ARS-GRIN program I pointed to just above. The first set I stratified about a third of them in the fridge over the winter of 2019-20, planted to pots and held them for about a year, and then transplanted to the ground the first spring after we moved to our current land. The last three pictures below show some of the 16 survivors from that batch. The other two thirds, I stratified the next year, potted up those that germinated, and lost every one of them over the winter of '21-22, even though I was protecting them better than those of the year before. The second batch of 100 seeds all stratified that same (this last) winter and those that germinated are planted to pots currently, as shown in the first picture below.

I'm moderately rough with these plants, but not STUN rough. I get a something like 85%+ germination rate in the fridge and I lose at least half as soon as I pot them. I'm not sure why, but it's also not that troubling to me. I suspect rodents ate the trees that I lost last winter so I'm planning to build a hardware cloth cage to enclose them in their nursery.

I am keeping them wrapped in fencing for the first several years. And you can see that I planted comfrey too close. That'll be moved further out and spread around, probably next year.

I can’t seem to get ahold of anyone at the USDA for seeds, and the GRIS site caters exclusively to researchers now (they don’t even let private parties enquire). I can’t even find any genuine samples available online (there was one nursery claiming to sell them, but the USDA now says they’re hybrids).

Any chance anyone procured seeds that they’re not using? I would just like to grow a few of these.

Daniel, did you email Dawn and get no reply? If you tried just once and it didn’t bounce, I’d try again before giving up.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Daniel, did you email Dawn and get no reply? If you tried just once and it didn’t bounce, I’d try again before giving up.

I did try Dawn several weeks ago, but I will try again. Thanks for the encouragement!

Daniel Jorje Becker wrote:I can’t seem to get ahold of anyone at the USDA for seeds, and the GRIS site caters exclusively to researchers now (they don’t even let private parties enquire). I can’t even find any genuine samples available online (there was one nursery claiming to sell them, but the USDA now says they’re hybrids).

Any chance anyone procured seeds that they’re not using? I would just like to grow a few of these.

I’d love to know the same thing, if there’s someone with Malus seiversii seeds or plants that are setting seed.