Syracuse U Professor Chip Grafts Resulting In Tree That Yields 40 Kinds Of Fruit

By using a technique called chip grafting, Syracuse University professor Sam Van Aken has created a “Tree of 40 Fruits” in a New York orchard that was about to declare bankruptcy in 2008. He purchased the orchard and used the technique on fruits with pits such as peaches, plus, nectarines, cherries and apricots, also known as stone fruits.

Aken slices a small branch with a bud from a stone fruit and inserts it into the branch of the mother tree which he calls working tree. He closes the graft with a tape for the “wound” to heal. Eventually, the bud begins to grow into a new branch, reports National Geographic.

After years of doing that, his working tree is a work of art as the blossoms of the would-be fruit come out in hues of purple and pink during spring, eventually becoming edible fruits in the summer. Because of the uniqueness of his creation, Aken, also an artist, has 16 such trees spread in different museums in the US as his way of promoting the concept of diversity on a small scale.

Aken says that he intentionally plants these trees in locations where people would see them. Upon beholding the uniqueness of the tree, the sight would often spur people to ask: “Why are the leaves shaped differently? Why are they different colours?”

The professor adds that the process of grafting fascinates him because it shows “how one living thing cut could be cut inserted into another living thing and continue to grow.” He sees in it as a good metaphor for sexuality in literature, citing Ovid’s Metamorphosis and modern men such as Frankenstein.

“Like the forms in these books I wanted the tree to be the beginning of a narrative. A form that when seen causes one to create narrative,” Huffington Post quotes Aken.

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