Seeing the headline you might get confused. Definitely is this possible? This is the question that will arise in your mind. I always say nature is full of mystery. However, this is not natural but human made.
A Tree of 40 Fruit is one of a series of fruit trees created by the Syracuse University Professor Sam Van Aken using the technique of grafting. Each tree produces forty types of stone fruit, of the genus Prunus, ripening sequentially from July to October in the United States.
Sam Van Aken is an associate professor of sculpture at Syracuse University. He is a contemporary artist who works beyond traditional art making and develops new perspective art projects in communication, Botany, and Agriculture. Aken was a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art+ Innovation in Charlotte.
His family is Pennsylvania Dutch, and he grew up on the family farm.
In 2008, while looking for specimens to create a multicolored blossom tree as an art project, Van Aken acquired the 3-acre orchard of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, which was closing due to funding cuts. He began to graft buds from some of the over 250 heritage varieties grown there, some unique, onto a stock tree. Over the course of about five years the tree accumulated branches from forty different “donor” trees, each with a different fruit, including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.
Each spring the tree’s blossom is a mix of different shades of red, pink and white.
Van Aken had produced 16 Trees of 40 Fruit, installed in a variety of private and public locations, including community gardens, museums, and private collections.
According to him, each tree starts as a slightly strange-looking variety, but then grows like any other tree out there. In spring, the trees come into full bloom and bear a variety of fruit around forty varieties the reason for its name.
Primarily composed of native and antique varieties the Tree of 40 Fruit is a form of conservation, preserving heirloom stone fruit varieties that are not commercially produced or available.
The Magical Tree is not only is a beautiful specimen, but it’s also helping to preserve the diversity of the world’s stone fruit. Stone fruits are selected for commercial growing based first and foremost on how long they keep, then how large they grow, then how they look, and lastly how they taste.