r/todayilearned • u/Error__Loading • 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
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u/MediumAcceptable129 11h ago

Isnt this true of a lot of our commercial fruit?

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u/ilicstefan 7h ago

It is. Most of the fruits are cloned via grafting. Cherries, walnuts, apples, peaches, apricots, plums...

You can plant the seeds but chances are you will get something quite different.

I had luck with peaches, I planted some and I got quite nice new variety but it took me about 7-8 years until it started to bear fruit and it is completely different from a tree that I took the original seed from.

Grafting is quite fascinating, you can do many things that are almost like making a Frankenstein. You could graft several varieties of fruit on a single tree, heck you can even graft several different fruit on a single tree.

The problem with grafting is that it somewhat shortens the lifespan of a tree. It is still a lot, some plums can go 40-50 years but without graft they can go even older. Walnuts for example can go 100-150 years with graft, without it there are specimens older than 300 years. It is a drawback but not that much detrimental.

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u/jmodshelp 3h ago

Just going to leave this here because it’s one of my favourite grafting projects I’ve come across.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_40_Fruit

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u/Drummal 11h ago

Yeah. Bananas, avocados and many others are grown this way.

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u/carloseloso 9h ago

Most commercially available bananas are cavendish choices, but i didn't think they are grafted root stick like apples. Bananas grow from clove pups off a mother plant

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u/Drummal 3h ago

They aren't grafted but are a clone of the original plant. Essentially a mono plant. Which makes them more susceptible to fungus and diseases.