June

Fruit Trees

There’s  a movement afoot. People are bringing food back into their yards and neighborhoods, they’re planting food forests, and cultivating local larders. In cities like Seattle and London people are working to plant fruit trees, rally harvest days, and cull fruit from metropolitan trees. They are raising awareness about food security, public health, urban sustainability, and ecosystem services. Organizations like Urban Food Forestry and Falling Fruit are encouraging people to take advantage of this cost-effective way of reconnecting with food and nature by providing resources and interactive maps to trees around the world – maybe even your neighborhood – where people are invited to harvest fruits and nuts.

Ecosystem services is a newly emerged concept that celebrates the positive benefits that wildlife or ecosystems provide to people. Four major categories of ecosystem services have been identified by the United Nation’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. They include:

• Provisioning – providing food, water, timber, fuel, and medicines;
• Regulating – filtering air and water, pollinating, and controlling erosion;
• Supporting – providing essential life-supporting functions like photosynthesis and nutrient cycling; and
• Cultural Services – offering opportunities for recreation, and creativity born from interactions with nature.

Just as fruit trees provide an ecosystem service to people, bees and other pollinators provide a service for the trees. Many fruit trees are not self pollinating. This means pollen from the flower’s anther (the male reproductive part) must be delivered to the stigma (the female reproductive part) of a flower on another tree.

Some plants can self pollinate in order to create a viable seed (like lettuces, tomatoes, beans, and peas) but this is not the case with many fruit trees, including apples, pears, and most sweet cherries. This is why many of the urban food forest movements include an effort to maintain bee populations – and why there is such a big concern about entire bee colonies dying.

Find out more about why scientist think Colony Collapse Disorder is happening (or watch the Nature Net-recommended documentary “Queen of the Sun“) and learn what you can do to help pollinator populations. You might even consider raising your own backyard bees. After all, bees are responsible for pollinating over 100 crop plants.

Did you know…

If you plant a seed from your granny smith apple, a different apple variety will grow on your new tree. The apple’s reproductive strategy is called “extreme heterozygote.” This means that during seed production, the genetic material from the parent trees combines in a completely random fashion and thus, a random fruit is produced. This explains why orchards use grafting to grow specific desired fruits.

To Do This Month:

Be sure to check out the ever-expanding fruit garden at Nature Net member site, Community GroundWorks at Troy Gardens. And keep an eye out for classes on fruit tree pruning and other orchard education.

Stop by Olbrich Garden’s Blooming Butterflies event now through August 9th to learn more about these important pollinators.

Our Favorite Fruit Tree Books

June Events

Community GroundWorks at Troy Gardens

Up-Cycled Tree

For Educators: