This crazy tree grows 40
Yeah the tree 40 fruit is a single fruit tree that grows over 40 different types of stone for including peaches plums apricots nectarines cherries and almonds the idea came from just sort of a fascination with the process of grafting of grafting yeah when I had seen it done as a child it was dr.seuss and frakenstein and just about everything fantastic I started traveling around central new York in new York state to look for different varieties of stone fuit eventually I was able to find these different heirloom antigue varieties but they are very rare so it bring them back here to my nursery graph them onto a tree so that I can continue to use them now I have a huge collection of plums and apricots through the project I’ve I’ve worked with a lot of growers and at first they didn’t understand it because they were why would you want to have a tree with that many different fruit on it you would have to go back over and over to continue too harvest all the fruit the project is for me always an art project I was really interested in the idea of a hoax in terms of you know hoax transforms reality part of the idea for the tree of 40 fruit was to plant them in locations that’s people would sort of stumble upon once they happen upon one of these trees they would start to question why are the leaf shaped differently why are they different colors and then in summer when you would see allof these different fruit growing on them and of course in spring when they bought some different colors it is an art work when I first started I started I just sort of grafted the branches on so leach variety blossoms at a slightly different time and I had a tree that blossomed all on one side but looked at on the other from that point on I created a timeline of when all of these different varieties blossom in relationship to each other so I could essentially sculpt towel the tree would diagram of the tree yeah it takes a really long time I start a tree and I let it go for about three year it becomes 1616 becomes 32 it’s essentially like an eight to nine year process essentially what you’re doing with this clear plastic is you’re creating a greenhouse around the graft heel in the first tree is planted in 2011 and it has the 40 varieties but I anticipate it will be about three or four years before it’s at that peak and then people awesome ok unlike any other artworks that that I’ve made these things continuously evolve I think one of the reasons why I’ve been able to keep it going for so long is that
Every year iy’s something new and when you come out here and the trees are all in blossom it’s really kind of an amazing experience plus you get fruit all summer