More on 200 year old fruit trees

 

 

A tip of the fedora to Lucky Pittman for pointing this video out to me

 

Three minute run time. Discusses Village 33 in Croatia where the old pear trees are known as "Napolean's pears". According to the story, the original trees were planted by the soldiers of Napolean's army. More accurately, they probably ate the pears and tossed the cores in places where these trees sprang up.

 

If true, that makes these trees approximately 220 years old.

This appears to be a graft line where the variety on top is overgrowing the rootstock.

 

I don't know if the story is true.

 

If these trees were humans, they would be 55-year-old brick-layers and stevedores.  Perhaps not in the prime of their lives but formidable characters none-the-less.

 

Walking trees

This is a single tree that laid over and struck roots, then some of those branches or stems laid over again and struck roots again. Over the course of 220 years the original tree expanded in several directions in this manner and now covers a quarter-acre. This tree is in Krolevets, Ukraine. Photo credit kolokray.com

The kind of tree that is optimal for the production of eating-quality fruit does NOT look like the tree shown above. On the other hand, the seed germinated over two hundred years ago and the tree is still spreading.

The point is that that a tree with the chops to survive more that two-centuries is not likely to look like the tree designed to put money in the pocket of a fruit-grower in 2020.