One tree, 40 different fruits

[Still Waters]

New York artist Sam Van Aken has a challenge not shared by many - if any - of his peers.

Aside from sketching and sculpting, he spends a good deal of his energy figuring how to keep hungry groundhogs off of his art works.

That's because Van Aken, 42, is creating living sculptures - unique fruit trees designed to bloom in multiple colours while bearing 40 different varieties of stone fruit such as apricots, cherries and peaches.

http://www.thestar.c...ens_vision.html

http://www.treeof40fruit.com/

Very pretty

[Taun]

It's a pity the tree won't reproduce itself in it's many different "flavors"...

[+Hammerclaw]

Grafting is an ancient art. It is how orchards of sweet apples are created as apples are naturally sour and the sweet strains mutations. The mutation does not carry to subsequent generations and can only be replicated by grafting from the desired tree to ordinary saplings.

Edited August 8, 2014 by John Wesley Boyd

[magikgoddess]

Gorgeous tree when in spring bloom (I loved that picture), would love to have a multi fruit tree like this. Grafting apple trees is done around my area (lots of orchards in the neighboring state) so I'm familiar with that process (it was actually taught in one of my h.s. science classes).