Award-winning artist Sam Van Aken has grown a hybridised fruit tree that produces 40 different varieties of stone fruit each year. Van Aken, an art professor from Syracuse University in the US, grew up on a family farm before pursuing a career as an artist, and has combined his knowledge of the two to develop his incredible Tree of 40 Fruit. In 2008, Van Aken learned that an orchid at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station was about to be shut down due to a lack of funding. This single orchid grew a great number of heirloom, antique, and native varieties of stone fruit, and some of these were 150 to 200 years old. To lose this orchid would render many of these rare and old varieties of fruit extinct, so to preserve them, Van Aken bought the orchid, and spent the following years figuring out how to graft parts of the trees onto a single fruit tree.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 11:19:43 +0000