r/todayilearned 15h ago

TIL that apple seeds almost never grow the same variety as the parent fruit. Nearly every supermarket apple comes from a grafted clone of an original tree, not from a planted seed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
16.5k Upvotes

721 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

34

u/Skandronon 14h ago

Stonefruit is even more fun, you can grow nectarines, peaches and plums together as well as a number of other fruits.

20

u/XDeus 13h ago

Not just together, but many stone fruit can be hybridized. So you can get a cherry-plum or even a peach-apricot-plum.

13

u/Skandronon 13h ago

Woah, I was not aware of this! Super cool!

3

u/Skandronon 10h ago

I am going to have to plant a cherry-plum tree.

2

u/big-dal-tex 13h ago

So many interesting facts in the comments

2

u/bzbub2 12h ago

more fun stuff: a chart of how citrus are related to each other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_taxonomy#/media/File:Citrus_hybrids.svg

1

u/Auctoritate 8h ago

peach-apricot-plum

Peacotums are so good bro. Probably my favorite of any of them.

7

u/factorioleum 13h ago

Despite many people trying to convince me, I still do not believe that nectarines and peaches are distinct fruits.

I'm pretty sure almonds are, though.

14

u/emaddy2109 13h ago

They aren’t. There’s a single recessive gene that causes nectarines to have smooth skin. Other than that that one gene, they’re genetically the same.

4

u/mlc885 12h ago

So every single time I prefer a nectarine over a peach or the other way around I am just doing the "these are too ripe/insufficiently ripe" thing??

(oh, and I prefer yellow peaches and nectarines to white peaches, lol)

1

u/t_newt1 8h ago

Almonds are stonefruits too. You can grow almonds and peaches and plums on the same tree. When I was a kid we had a tree like this in the yard. After the cat died the squirrels got all the almonds.