We were very kindly sent some Torreya californica seeds by Don Thomas of the California Native Plant Society a few months ago, and today I took the seeds out of their cold stratification in the fridge to plant out. They should’ve come out a few weeks ago, but I have been having trouble concentrating lately due to very troubling world affairs…
Don sourced the seeds from the Santa Cruz mountains, and they are… ginormous as the post title states. In the photo below we have compared them to average sized New Zealand sourced Torreya californica seeds (the largest NZ sized seeds probably come close to the smallest Santa Cruz mountains sourced seed). I have no idea how much of the size difference is caused by genetic versus environmental differences, and unfortunately it will take decades to be able to tell. For now we hope to get as many of these sprouted as possible, and then get these trees planted more commonly around New Zealand.
Thanks once again to Don for his help and kindness!
Torreya californica seeds compared by size. Average-sized New Zealand sourced seeds on the left, ginormous Santa Cruz mountains source on the right.
Last Friday I was searching for old and wild fruit trees in Canterbury. As usual, much of the wild fruit trees that I come across are average at best. I was happily inspecting a plum, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw an unusual fruit tree, with small, bright yellow fruits. I thought it could be a hawthorn species (Crataegus). However, when I got closer, it was clear this was no Crataegus. No, this tree was a pear, unlike anything I’d ever seen before!
The tree was very large, approximately 90cm dbh, maybe 20m tall or so. I’d estimate very roughly it’s at least 100 years old, but I’m not very good at dating trees in Canterbury (more sun, less rain and different soils than what I’m used to).
The fruits had what’s called a ‘persistent style’, i.e. the flower structure (the star shaped part) is retained on the bottom of the fruit rather than falling off.
Persistent styles on hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) fruit
I smelled the fruits, and they had a strong pear fragrance. I took a small bite. They were very tannic (i.e. lots of tannins), yet still sweet and flavourful. Some of the fruits on the floor has begun to blet (i.e. turn brown), and these ones smelled strongly like marzipan!
Idid a bit of research then and there, and I was able to quickly narrow it down to high confidence this tree was Pyrus pyraster. The ‘pyraster’ part as I understand is Latin for ‘pear star’ or ‘star pear’ (aster = star, pyr = pear), and certainly the persistent style is star-shaped, so that fits well. I have visited a few Pyrus collections at various arboreta in New Zealand, and had never seen one with fruit like this before – almost all other Pyrus species in New Zealand are essentially tiny, sour nashis, so that is another clue this was something unusual that I hadn’t seen before.
As an aside it’s worth explaining what a perry pear is. Just as there are dessert apples and cider apples, there are dessert pears and cider pears. The cider variants generally have higher acid and higher tannins, as this helps to keep the flavour of the fermented drink from developing too many volatile compounds, the ones that make it smell like rotten fruit. Cider prepared from mostly dessert varieties, tends to be of low quality as a result (and unfortunately, most cider in New Zealand is made from dessert fruit…). Pear cider is traditionally called perry, and so the ‘cider pears’ are actually called perry pears. Perry pears are usually hybrids between Pyrus pyraster, and Pyrus communis.
One last special thing to note about pears and perry, is that they contain sorbitol, which is a sugar alcohol with a sweet taste (it’s sometimes used as an artificial sweetener). Sorbitol is not metabolized by yeast, so when pear juice with sorbitol is fermented, it doesn’t taste completely ‘dry’ (i.e. low sugar), because the sorbitol will provide the sweet taste. This is in contrast to apple cider, where if you ferment it a bit too far, all the sugar is gone, so it doesn’t have a sweet taste anymore.
As a massive co-incidence, earlier that very day I posted some pear fruit from a very old West Coast pear tree (also over 100 years old), to Trevor at Teepee Cider as I thought they might be tannic enough to make perry with. Perry pears are incredibly rare in New Zealand, and Trevor has been looking for them for a number of years now. Only 5 hours later after posting some possible perry pears off, here I was finding the first wild perry pear I’ve ever seen, what are the chances?
Pyrus pyraster fruits on a plate, compared to a $2 coin.
It’s probably worth mentioning that Pyrus pyraster is also considered as a subspecies of the common pear – Pyrus communis subsp. pyraster. I find this rather confusing so have avoided this name, as in my opinion it’s much easier to talk about the wild relatives with a distinct species name, e.g. Malus sieversii is the main wild ancestor of Malus domestica.
When I got home I asked the folks from EFNEX for help confirming the identification, and the replies agreed this tree was likely Pyrus pyraster. I also talked to a few New Zealand experts, but haven’t yet had a clear answer as to whether there are other known pure-ish P. pyraster in New Zealand, although they did mention there are at least a few perry pears in New Zealand. Certainly there are none on inaturalist (just one misidentified feral pear), and I didn’t find any references in a few online lists of New Zealand trees.
So the next steps are to get permission to propagate this tree, and then work on propagation via both grafting and seedlings. I believe there is a whole world of new pear varieties that inherit the wonderful features of this one, such as smaller fruit in clusters, bright yellow fruit with smooth skins (no russeting), disease resistance, and new flavours, and so it would be great to see them.
This is only part 1 of the story about this tree…. There is much more to come…
Some time ago, a fellow kiwi was on holiday in Vietnam, near Cat Tien National Park, eating some bananas. Unusually though, inside one of the bananas were 10 seeds (the rest were seedless). She kindly posted the seeds to me. This post is about what happened when I grew them.
The bananas that were eaten in Vietnam, near Cat Tien National ParkThe 10 seeds from inside the fruit
It’s not well known, but seedless edible bananas can set seeds under certain circumstances. As a very brief primer, edible bananas are parthenocarpic, which means that fruits can be set without any pollination. This is also how seedless mandarins produce fruit.
Furthermore, edible banana varieties are often partially or almost completely sterile (which can come from male or female sterility, or both), which means that even if the flowers were successfully pollinated, no embryo would form, so no seeds. Seedless mandarins by contrast usually are female fertile, and thus can produce seeds if pollinated by fertile pollen. Hence the advice to plant seedless mandarins alone, far away from lemons and grapefruits.
The rates of viable seed set in edible bananas vary depending on the variety. Pisang Awak type [ABB] as well as Blue Java {ABB] are on the slightly fertile side. The late Roger Bodie of Gisborne bred his Wainui banana from a Pisang Awak crossed with a Blue Java.
Cavendish [AAA] is on the almost completely infertile side (horror stories of a ton of carefully hand-pollinated bananas being mushed through a sieve, one by one, to get a handful of mostly infertile seeds).
Edible banana varieties (with few exceptions) are classified as Musa × paradisiaca, which is legal to import as seed into New Zealand under the ‘Basic’ category. These seeds were legally imported via mail.
We planted the 10 seeds on the 24th July, 2023, using Tui seed raising mix (has a bit of fungicide in it, which is useful for seeds that have to sit for a very long time), and left them in the kitchen, with a bag to cover the top of the pot to hold in humidity. I fairly regularly misted the surface of the soil and the inside of the bag to keep them moist.
On about the 15th of May 2024, we noticed one seed had sprouted! A little green spike straight out of the soil. 10 months until the first one sprouted – one must be patient to sprout banana seeds. I shared this with banana expert Gabe Sachter-Smith and he mentioned that it’s very common for banana sprouts from these varieties to stall, and then die, so to not get our hopes up too high.
The green spike straight out of the potting mixThe first leaf of the banana sprout. A bit of slow release fertilizer is visible in the photo next to the plant.
Gabe also reckoned that it was mostly likely the seeds were from a Pisang Awak type (a common variety in this part of Asia, and regularly produces seeds if pollinated), pollinated by a Musa balbisiana, which are also commonly planted in villages and farms in Vietnam. The seeds and dried fruits of M. balbisiana are used medicinally, the leaves are used for wrapping food and the pseudostems are used for animal feed.
In early August, the sprout looked like this. It’s not just the lighting, it was actually yellowish. I used the ‘twang’ test to determine that it had essentially no roots at this time (lightly twang the plant, and if it vibrates, it’s rooted, if it just shifts in the direction of the twang, it has few/no roots). Another seed had also sprouted as well (barely visible in the photo, since deceased).
Vietnam banana sprout in August 2024
By November, the seedling seems to have cleared the danger zone (where it is still relying on stored energy from the seed rather than its own roots), and was now firmly rooted and growing faster. The other seed that had sprouted had since died, however another had sprouted (still alive as of posting, although minuscule in size and not yet passed the danger zone)
Vietnam banana sprout in November 2024
By now, I also noticed that the leaves were quite thick, compared to my diploid banana plants (e.g. Musa yunnanensis, which I will write a post about soon), and more in line with the thickness of some Dwarf Cavendish plants. Without getting too deep into the details, this could be a sign of the plant having higher ploidy levels (i.e. it could be triploid or tetraploid). Pisang Awak itself is triploid, and it can often produce triploid or tetraploid offspring, as well as diploid.
By late December 2024, the seedling looked like this:
Vietnam banana sprout in December 2024
It had started to gain a lot of red pigmentation around the petioles and pseudostem, presumably from the increased sunlight. There is a waxy coat on the undersides of the leaf, and it doesn’t currently look like the petiole canal will close up. I’m no banana expert, but it looks to me like it has more acuminata genes than balbisiana. It looks a bit like a Jamaican Red. We shall see.
So long as the plant inherits genes for parthenocarpy (ability to produce fruits without pollination), it should produce edible fruit (if it is tetraploid, it is guaranteed to have these genes from the mother). I won’t be upset if the plant is fully female fertile (=sets seeds if pollinated), as quite often most banana growers in New Zealand chop off the male part of the flower (the bell) anyway, so it’s unlikely there’ll be much banana pollen being transported around by bees, and even if there are seeds, it’s useful for further breeding.
With luck it could be a new edible banana variety for New Zealand. There is still a lot of work to do to trial this banana outside and see if it can grow and fruit successfully, but this is a great first step.
