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Post by steev on Feb 10, 2016 11:54:07 GMT -5
I can hardly wait!
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 10, 2016 16:45:11 GMT -5
I understand. I guess I was just assuming that the trees grown in the Hunza valley are edible-seeded variants of either P. mandshurica or P. armeniaca. It would be nice to know but not much info out there. I am also starting to assume, from what you are saying and from what I have read elsewhere, that there are no stable edible sweet-seeded strains in existence. Meaning that every tree has to be proven to have edible sweet seeds, and for that matter growing trees from edible sweet seeds does not guarantee those trees will themselves produce edible sweet seeds. It all seems to be a crap shoot. Another issue I am confused about: Are any P. mandshurica known to produce edible sweet seeds or are they only produced on P. armeniaca? If only produced on P. armeniaca, are edible sweet seeds consistently produced or is it not known until the trees mature so that the seeds can be tasted and proven? I also find this edible/inedible apricot kernel issue to be a confusing topic. Are the bitter ones toxic, truly harmful to humans, or not? I am of the opinion that they are in fact unsafe to consume. But if harmful then how can this product be offered: Bitter Apricot Kernels Am I to understand that a product is being offered on Amazon that will kill people or at least make them sick if they purchase and consume? If edible sweet-seeded strains are rare then how can this be offered: Sweet Apricot Kernels As a side note, being a raw organic product I wonder if they are viable... My reason for belaboring this discussion is simply that I want to acquire some apricot trees that produce edible sweet seeds, and I want to be 100% certain that what I acquire will in fact be an edible sweet-seeded variant. Otherwise I will have simply planted more of what I already have and will have wasted my time. If 100% certainty is not possible, I accept that but it means I will not bother with the attempt. At this point it does not look very promising to me but I am still hopeful. Not many decent nut-producing varieties of trees and shrubs grow in my climate and this seems like it could be an acceptable addition to my foodscape. steev - That sounds like it would have been interesting to attend. Did they have any wild ones for tasting? [Edit] I posted this while not being aware of Diane's most recent post... I am not aware of anyone who is selling sweet seeded grafted apricots specifically because they have sweet seeds nor am I aware of anyone who has come up with a variety that breeds true for sweetness. I just started planting sweet seeds a few years ago and in another 20-30 years maybe I'll have something that breeds true. Actually I have to assume that the sweet pits DO breed true. If they didn't, I can;t see any way anyone could sell the pits. If the trees could revert from sweet to bitter randomly, then you'd have to be continually worried about the traits of both the mother AND father tree (kernel/embryo and endosperm are both sexually produced tissue, so the pollen's DNA is in there for 1/3 or 1/2 of the total (I'm saying both because I think stone fruits are one of the plants were the embryo basically absorbs the endosperm into itself, like with a bean, and I honestly don't know if it absorbs it as cells (in which case it's a patchwork of 2n and 3n material or just drains the food out (in which case all tissue in an adult seed is 2n) And I distinctly remember seeing an ad for sweet pit apricot trees in a nursery catalog some years ago (I want to say Stokes but am not sure) |
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Post by waynem on Feb 11, 2016 7:15:28 GMT -5
Garfield Shults of Homedale, Idaho developed a sweet pit apricot which I believe is the SweetHeart apricot offered by Stark Brothers.
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Post by mskrieger on Feb 11, 2016 12:29:54 GMT -5
Actually I have to assume that the sweet pits DO breed true. If they didn't, I can;t see any way anyone could sell the pits. If the trees could revert from sweet to bitter randomly, then you'd have to be continually worried about the traits of both the mother AND father tree (kernel/embryo and endosperm are both sexually produced tissue, so the pollen's DNA is in there for 1/3 or 1/2 of the total (I'm saying both because I think stone fruits are one of the plants were the embryo basically absorbs the endosperm into itself, like with a bean, and I honestly don't know if it absorbs it as cells (in which case it's a patchwork of 2n and 3n material or just drains the food out (in which case all tissue in an adult seed is 2n) And I distinctly remember seeing an ad for sweet pit apricot trees in a nursery catalog some years ago (I want to say Stokes but am not sure) That's why we graft fruit trees! Clones are so much more predictable. |
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Post by castanea on Feb 12, 2016 0:18:14 GMT -5
I am not aware of anyone who is selling sweet seeded grafted apricots specifically because they have sweet seeds nor am I aware of anyone who has come up with a variety that breeds true for sweetness. I just started planting sweet seeds a few years ago and in another 20-30 years maybe I'll have something that breeds true. Actually I have to assume that the sweet pits DO breed true. If they didn't, I can;t see any way anyone could sell the pits. If the trees could revert from sweet to bitter randomly, then you'd have to be continually worried about the traits of both the mother AND father tree (kernel/embryo and endosperm are both sexually produced tissue, so the pollen's DNA is in there for 1/3 or 1/2 of the total (I'm saying both because I think stone fruits are one of the plants were the embryo basically absorbs the endosperm into itself, like with a bean, and I honestly don't know if it absorbs it as cells (in which case it's a patchwork of 2n and 3n material or just drains the food out (in which case all tissue in an adult seed is 2n) And I distinctly remember seeing an ad for sweet pit apricot trees in a nursery catalog some years ago (I want to say Stokes but am not sure) I'm not saying that some trees may not breed true. Some probably do. But I'm not aware of anyone who has that variety or sells it. Also, people who have sold sweet seeded trees have never to my knowledge guaranteed that they breed true. I have bought some sweet seeded Hunza apricot seeds on more than one occasion. I just finished off a bag a couple of months ago. What I quickly found out was that some of the seeds were sweet and some were not. Which means that the people providing the seeds probably did not have guaranteed sweet lines. |
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Post by steev on Feb 12, 2016 3:09:49 GMT -5
Sounds like we should make an effort to stabilize such, perhaps grafting clones; I'm in.
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Post by castanea on Feb 12, 2016 10:01:01 GMT -5
Sounds like we should make an effort to stabilize such, perhaps grafting clones; I'm in. I was having that discussion with a friend years ago. He said "they've already done it - we call them almonds". ;-) But seriously, I do wonder what type of fruit quality we'll have when we get a breeding line of apricots with sweet pits. It probably won't be happening in my lifetime though. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 12, 2016 12:47:06 GMT -5
I had read that it is possible to breed almonds with peaches to the point where you could get a "double crop" tree where both the fruit and the seed are edible.
A few years back my parents bought what was labeled as an almond tree. The first year it produced fruit the small firm fruits looked more like a nectarine than what we were expecting as presumably all green fruit. The fruit i found was tasty. My dad said the seeds tasted bitter and he wasn't sure if it was because it was pollinated by the nearby peach tree. Still not sure what it actually is. And it almost died this past year because of some sort of disease or borer killing off all the stonefruit trees and apple trees. Will bitterness show up in the F1 seed? Does anyone have a photo of what the fruit of an almond tree looks like?
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 12, 2016 16:34:08 GMT -5
Actually I literally JUST had an interesting incident related to this thread today, and one I am VERY glad I put two and two together on early. Today I had actually taken one of the bags of dried apricots with me (in case anyone in the group session I was at cared for an apricot) No one did, so I was putting the bag back in my pack when I suddenly noticed something; among the dried apricots was an in the shell almond, one that looked a little odd; shorter and fatter than I am used to. At the time I though no further about it (beyond saying I would plant it at some point) However a few hours later the peg dropped into the hole in my brain and the following point came together Short Fat Almond = BITTER almond. So it is good I did not eat it! And here is a photo of an almond fruit  You actually sometimes find almonds with their fruit still on them if you go through the boxes of loose nuts you find at a lot of supermarkets. As far as I know, almond fruit is not edible, or, at least not pleasant. I rather think the flavor is similar to eating a RAW ume plum (a normal one; I have heard of sweet fleshed plums that are genetically ume/mei) |
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Post by castanea on Feb 13, 2016 13:55:40 GMT -5
At The USDA almond planting near Winters, California they have a few trees that are peaches with sweet pits.
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Post by templeton on Apr 17, 2017 18:09:20 GMT -5
just read through this thread.
Icollected almonds growing on a feral tree next to an old gold mining site here in bendigo. it was growing high on a dry exposed ridge - well, as high as ridges get round here. The almonds were inedibly bitter. i would imagine it was descended from a cultivated, and therefore edible, almond. I suspect that environmental conditions = stress led to the bitter taste.
although cyanide has been used in gold extraction, so maybe it was concentrating it from the environment...
T
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Post by philagardener on Apr 17, 2017 19:52:50 GMT -5
Cultivated almonds need about a gallon of water per mature almond produced, so I wonder if the dryness of that location was part of it.
Do you have any of the offspring started in your garden, T?
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 17, 2017 21:57:45 GMT -5
I suppose also that THEORETICALLY the miners could have planted a bitter almond for the purposes of having a ready supply of cyanide, but this seems unlikely, the low unit cost plus high extraction cost of cyanide would argue for anyone needing any to simply buy commercial rather than try to make their own (this also argues against a bitter almond they brought for extraction getting lost and winding up in the ground, why would the bring in the almonds instead of pure cyanide?). Plus I'm fairly sure that the stuff used in gold extraction/cleaning is potassium cyanide, not amygdalin/hydrogen cyandide (in fact I am almost sure of it, I remember reading how one of the leading experts of numismatics died because he was cleaning his coins, got confused and took a swig out of the cup of cyanide solution he was using (as opposed to the glass of ginger ale he had next to it.)
On the other hand, bringing in a sweet almond tree also would be a bit odd. Gold mines tend to be short lived affairs (at least here, maybe in that area gold was assumed to be so plentiful that people could go in assuming the mine would stay open and profitable for 30+ years. And, as you point out, edible almonds need a lot of water, so not exactly an ideal tree choice (unless they were watering it with the wastewater from the gold extraction.)
I short, I have no idea why an almond tree of ANY sort would be there.
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Post by steev on Apr 18, 2017 0:21:09 GMT -5
For no particular reason, I will note that my aamonds and apricots are looking to be very productive this year.
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Post by prairiegardens on Apr 24, 2017 8:04:54 GMT -5
There's an outfit selling wild sweet apricot kernels online. Any chance they might sprout or highly unlikely because they'll have dried out?
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