#treeof40fruit

What is it? Tree of 40 Fruit, a pomological project by Sam Van Aken, Sculpture Professor at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. The project involves a dozen hybrid trees across the USA; each has branches from a wide range of stoned fruit grafted to the trunk over the course of several years. The result: each tree flowers in different colours at different times, and produces cherries, peaches, plums, etc. all from the same tree.

It’s good because while grafting is a widely used practice in horticulture, this takes that approach to an artistic extreme, creating living art which will grow, flower and fruit for years to come. Some of the branches grafted into each tree include antique fruit varieties, so the tree also acts as a form of conservation, preserving these rarer varieties, and creating opportunities for unusual cross-pollination.