am doubtful of it too.
not doubting though that some cultivars of apples/pears live much, much longer compared to common stone fruits. There is this pear in the northeast which is supposedly ~400 yrs old and still productive, which is quite impressive, if not unheard of. Presumably it was planted from seed, but would be difficult for anyone to anticipate any of its suckers living 400 years more, or anticipate a sucker continuing to be productive if it so manages to cycle an additional 400 years…
yeah, always sobering a thought that many trees outlive humans by hundreds of years, and often makes me want to run pathetic estimates on what number of years might be left of the mortal fool typing this, lol
Speaking of trees that much outlive any human (or any animal that I know of): There is a stand of supposedly clonal aspen in Utah called “the Pando” that is something like 80,000 years old. Pando (tree) - Wikipedia
I know folks have layered mulberry, the only mulberry I have tried to airlayer was Girardi because it is one of cultivars I have never gotten a cutting to root from. I did a partial girdle and Clonex rooting hormone but it did not take on my 2 attempts.
I’m still trying to figure out what you’re arguing. You had previously said that an air layered cutting and the productive tree would have the same productive life times and both would experience decline at the same time. What about trees that are or can be commercial propagated from cuttings (eg. pomegranates, quinces, grapes, figs etc…)? Shouldn’t every tree ever propagated have already died along with the mother tree, because they’re all on the same doomsday clock? Or are you only talking about peaches?
Regarding earlier production to fruit from grafting/budding – the reason for this is because the scion/bud has been taken from wood that has already differentiated into fruiting/spurring wood, not because the graftwood has a molecular clock synced with the mother tree. Yes it takes period of time for the tree to develop from seedling to fruit bearing wood (i.e. a juvenile period), but the ‘age’ of the wood isn’t conveyed on to any cutting/scion/bud — it is only the current state of cellular differentiation, along with any accumulated somatic mutations (nucleotide transitions/transversions/insertion/deletions), aneuploidy/polyploidy events and epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation) which are passed on.
Perhaps your mother peach tree and air-layered peach trees just got the same bug at the same time and it’s a coincidence that they happend to decline at the same time?
those trees you mentioned are long-lived, so impossible to know in our lifetimes. And if ever there were short-lived cultivars/species, likely we didn’t get a chance to know them because, well, they’ve already died out. We’ve only been reliably recording lifespans of cultivars for how many decades/centuries? Anything above a century and it gets really fuzzy.
yes, i agree with that, but there is also evidence from other circumstances that make me think it not being the absolute.
besides, anybody could then infer that both of us do not believe in limited lifespans. And that pretty much any plant propagated via cuttings/suckers and lives hundreds of years is virtually immortal(say in ideal conditions where there are no pests/diseases). The difference in our views is pretty much my take on the lemon analogy/tomato analogy(species with much shorter lifespans) i brought up in earlier posts. You could extend the lives and somehow preserve(or at least prolong) the set of genes of a really old lemon tree/tomato bush by grafting their budwood onto younger rootstock, but can never extend its life by having any of them grow on their own roots.
or worse, grafting onto an even older lemon tree or tomato bush.
a great deal of any plant’s projected lifespan is influenced by the age of its roots. I find it hard to imagine propagating species with generally short lifespans and if, say, we found a sterile place where there are no pests/diseases, and stopped grafting peaches/lemons onto young rootstock, and simply airlayer them when they start declining, and assume that the rooted stem would start with a clean juvenile slate and live long as if they germinated from seed. Do you actually think it will have promising results?
with tomatoes alone, do you think a rooted cutting will start as a juvenile and live longer than say, the 2 year old mother plant you cut it from?
i did tests on that and found out it wasn’t the case… Would you have differing views, or first- hand accounts on this or something similar, proving that longevity is increased by mere cuttings?
with figs and other long-lived species which we propagate with cuttings, we have yet to find out what their average lifespans are, because they evidently live long. But with tomatoes, we know almost exactly when they start declining and dying, so i see it a more reliable case-scenario.
this holds true as a real-life scenario for everyone who grows trees, but i was never referring to this at all. I was referring to that ideal world where there are no bugs or diseases, and where the only variables are age of stem,and age of rootstocks(if not growing on own roots)
Thanks for sharing your experience with trying to layer Girardi. Sounds like it is tough to get it to work. I was also considering pruning and then trying to t-bud the buds from what I prune off onto the many seedling mulbs I see around. Not sure if that will work either, so maybe I’ll prune a little for some bidding and try to layer the rest.
@gsims1997, here’s my ultra-simplified hypothetical depiction of two identical tomatoes forming above-ground roots as they age, except that one is serially being severed(as cuttings), while the other is left alone. Roots are in orange. When we obtain cuttings, we generally do the cutting from above-ground(shown by red dash-lines)., or we could even be ‘more gentle’ by cutting serially from way below ground(blue dash-lines), which is basically just root-pruning. There’s nothing i see here which would prolong the life of the tomato on the left which has had its roots pruned serially from below, and even less reasons for the cutting to have a longer life if it is abruptly cut from above-ground and replanted, compared to the undisturbed one on the right. At best, they will have identical lifespans, and at worst, the one on the left(especially if severed above ground) will be less productive and have a shorter lifespan, considering that it has lost a great deal of its taproot.
Now, we could envision this on a grape, quince, or pomegranate, or fig planted as a seedling. We let them grow and then obtain cuttings(or simply just prune the roots) from these later, as in the same experiment with the tomato. Assuming we already know their projected lifespans, i still couldn’t find a reason how the above-ground cutting, or even the one with roots merely pruned from below ground, will live much longer than that with roots or stems undisturbed, especially when the one on the left is severed too far from the taproot. Only diseases/pests or soil deterioration(i.e. ‘rose-sick’ soil) will result in an airlayer performing better than the mother plant(assuming the airlayered stem itself is far from age of senescence, and replanted on better soil and in a disease-/pest-free location.)
I believe what your diagram is missing is age of cell, quality of cell, and cause of death. The issue that I see with your description is that it seems to take as an assumption that plants have a certain deterministic lifespan. That’s at the very best a simplification. Things die for many reasons; some cells have built in reproduction counters, but these aren’t the most common types of cells. Sometimes a species may have a systemic weakness, ie being able to out grow their vascular system. Most of the stuff that seems to intentionally die doesn’t exactly HAVE to die, so much as it begins to hormonally behave in a manner that allows it to die for reproductive completion. However, those hormone imbalances can be tampered with varying levels of directness intentionally by humans.
In your diagram, if you assume no nuclear mutations or pathogen infections, if you take your year old tomato mother and let it sprout a bunch of water sprouts, and take them as cuttings, and root them, they certainly aren’t “a year old”. They aren’t a “day old” either. They are somewhere in the middle, as they will have a poor quality root structure until it fills in, but they will exhibit a hormonal balance that shifts much younger as the hormones from the previous root system decay. They will NOT however have the woody structures in the stem that the older mother will have started developing, and thus will grow in a more vigorous manner similar to a much younger plant. And in the absence of pests or environmental pressure, will be expected to essentially live as long as the original plant did from roughly that age. For practical purposes, that’s what REAL biological age is, hormone balance and quality of energy production, with aggravating factors including photo period, water quality, nutrient quality, color shifts, radiation, disease, and pests.
I only think your logic holds up if there’s an environmental factor that causes the death. Obviously the two plants have the same immunities and would be vulnerable to things like photo period hormonal shifts identically. However, if the cause of death is something related to size or actual age, IE girdling from sun scald due to lower branches dying off, or even a genetic flaw suddenly presenting, from that perspective, the younger tree is absolutely younger. It’s effective age is the hormone condition from prior to cutting it, the regrowth of roots, and however old the actual cells are.
I’m absolutely not an expert, but I feel fairly strongly that the way you believe it works NOT being how it works is exactly why stem cell research is going on. I’m not sure I did a good of articulating exactly why I think your logic is flawed however.
@MisterGuy - Agreed. If you root material from a tree at year 40 of a tree with an expected lifespan of 50 years, the rooted material will not die in 10 years. If this were reality, the whole proposition of running a commercially successful nursery operation which employs clonal propagation would be an impossibility. Using this logic – we should worry about an impending fruit-pocalypse. All the Fuji apples and Fuji clone trees throughout the world one day will up and dissappear all at once — an apple-Rapture of sorts. He argues that the reason why we haven’t already seen this happen yet is b/c these cultivars are so long-lived – so therefore we haven’t been able to see them yet die en-mass – but the doomsday clock is ticking.
@thecityman - Plant your air layered Peach and don’t worry about the fruit-pocalypse. Peaches are short lived, it may die, before-during-or-after the death of the mother tree — but it won’t be because it was programmed to die by the mother tree, it will be because of the health of the cutting, the ability of the cultivar to grow vigorously “own-rooted”, the quality of the soil and your cultural practices — the same challenges you face with any tree air-layered or not.
would like to ask then–if a hormonal balance sets a tomato airlayer back to a younger age(somewhere in between like you said), does this mean you have concluded we could make a tomato budwood immortal simply by obtaining serial cuttings from it when it starts declining? Would really appreciate if you or anyone thinking in the same lines would answer this.
also, if you refer to the diagram, the reason why i drew those blue dash lines and red dash-lines is to illustrate the simplistic equivalent of obtaining airlayers, referring to your following quote-- [quote=“MisterGuy, post:50, topic:5331”]
They will NOT however have the woody structures in the stem that the older mother will have started developing, and thus will grow in a more vigorous manner similar to a much younger plant.
[/quote]
if we should severe at the lowest portion of the tap root, we essentially created a cutting that need not be replanted, and could simply add more soil(or raise the water level if growing via hydroponics) to accommodate the roots higher up. Again, i ask you, would root-pruning at the very bottom rejuvenate the entire plant and rewind it back to " somewhere in the middle" in age?
would you agree that this tomato plant will still have the woody structures in the above-ground stem that the ‘older mother’(which to me is a misnomer) has developed? As i see it, having its taproot removed actually compromises the entire plant’s overall health albeit very mildly since it is . Do you actually think it will extend the lifespan and productive life compared to the control on the right with roots totally safe.
now, had we not severed it at the lowest portion, and instead notched it higher up, at the next blue dash line, and then did the same exact thing by adding more soil, how will the new circumstance affect the tomato? will it be positive or negative? Please tell me your thoughts. Will it actually rejuvenate it, and add extra months or even years to its expected lifespan?
now, instead of immediately cutting the taproot below ground, we first girdle at the segment between the lower red dash line and the upper blue dash line(at the soil level), then add more soil to stimulate more root growth above the previous soil level , then after some time, simply just totally severe it at the girdled site to obtain the ‘air-layer’, which is what it is. Will that also increase the life and productive expectancy of the tomato? It literally lost its taproot, would this have positive or negative consequences?
would you at least agree that cutting from the lowest portion of the taproot is actually less detrimental to the tom, and that cutting higher up would have more severe implications? Or do you really think that the tomato on the left, regardless of where it is cut, will still be rejuvenated to ‘somewhere in the middle’(in age), effectively living longer and more productive than the control which was undamaged all along?
and that by obtaining serial cuttings from it, the subsequent cuttings will be essentially younger, ad infinitum?
the reason why short-lived nectarines are still around is because they are being grafted to younger rootstock. even in the absences of diseases/pests, serial cuttings from nectarines will decline rather quickly.
as for the the cultivars grown from cuttings that are actually long-lived, it is really hard to tell, because we don’t live long enough. But i could wager that those obtained from cuttings and never grafted to younger rootstock will ultimately decline en masse(fruit-pocalypse)–like you said. when senescence finally prevails.
hard to prove it in our lifetimes, as there’s a grapevine somewhere in eastern europe that is ~400 years old, many figs in the mediterranean/middle east living hundreds of years, and a pomegranate in italy that is 300+, and all are still fruitful.
btw, in india/china, there is this weird biological phenomenon among certain bamboos. Bamboos are perennial, and you could do serial cuttings(suckers) from them, but regardless of when you obtain them, they will more or less fruit and die at ~ 35 years, not much more and not much less, whether or not they are still attached underground to the mother plant or have been separated by artificial means and replanted(or simply severed from the mother plant, by say, a rodent). Being a monocot, we can’t graft them to younger rootstock, so the pre-programmed death is easy to witness. In my arguments, the tomato/peach/lemon scenario is still that same thing have been adhering to all along. And the tomato experiment is quite reproducible for anybody. I did it and came to a conclusion, anyone could also try it. Obtaining cuttings did not extend the lifespan of the tomatoes. They declined at about the same time-- and worse-- the cuttings were not as fruitful as the controls.
In a perfect absence of disease, pest pressure or genetic damage, you can theoretically make most plants immortal.[quote=“jujubemulberry, post:52, topic:5331”]
if we should severe at the lowest portion of the tap root, we essentially created a cutting that need not be replanted, and could simply add more soil(or raise the water level if growing via hydroponics) to accommodate the roots higher up. Again, i ask you, would root-pruning at the very bottom rejuvenate the entire plant and rewind it back to " somewhere in the middle" in age?
[/quote]
I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here. Root cuttings work well in some plants and not so well in others. Trimming back roots is occasionally necessary and beneficial, and does stimulate growth. Trimming both the top and bottom back of a tomato plant will rejuvenate it to the extent it’s disease and pest free and the environment is conducive to growth. What I THINK you may be asking is if you can fool GENETICALLY DETERMINISTIC plants with root cuttings. No, not that know of.
All that being said, every time you cut a plant you take a saving roll against the universe and have some degree chance of having introduced the pathogen that will eventually kill it.
have to disagree. The absence of disease/pests, a root-pruned or airlayered tomato will not live much longer than one that was never root-pruned or airlayered. And really hard for me to envision a two or three year old declining tomato being air-layered, and then anticipate the air-layered cutting to renew vigor and live another three years, and infinitely.
exactly my point. And not just with root cuttings, but also stem cuttings. And exactly why i think the control and the experimental tomatoes would assume the same life expectancies.
had to re-quote the above post, as forgot to bring up taproots being shunned by bonsai practitioners–not only due to its downward growth against tiny trays, but also due to the vigorous vegetative growth it causes on the intended bonsai(which is something one wouldn’t want when intentionally stunting trees.
airlayered trees are generally not as vegetatively vigorous as those grown from seed, due to the lack of taproots. You could try this on citrus. A 2 foot tall airlayered lemon from a 20 year old lemon tree may easily be overtaken in growth by a lemon seedling in a few years. And will overtake it by many feet for decades. It will continue to be taller and more vigorous overall even when it starts being productive.
And reasonable to anticipate that if we obtain a 2 foot tall airlayer from the bigger but younger lemon tree, that this air-layer will lose its vegetative vigor, but could still wager that it will outlive the older air-layered lemon.
For indeterminate tomatoes, that’s exactly what you can do. That is my point with saying initially that there’s a relatively small number of plants that humans have deliberately encouraged genetic flaws in that give them a limited lifespan, but the majority of plants die by outside factors not some kind of genetic time to live.
yes, indeterminate toms live longer than determinate ones without having to airlayer, so at this point in our correspondence, it is a matter of whether or not one deems it(or any other perennial species, for that matter) perpetually rejuvenated with serial cuttings. . Anyways, thanks for yours and @gsims1997 input.
I have 2 fig branches laying on the ground since late May and both have fine tiny roots growing from the branches. When would be a good month to cut them from the parent tree? Also, should I put them in a pot and later plant them in the ground or go straight to the ground? One is a brown turkey and the other is black mission, if that matters. They don’t have a huge root system, just wondering if maybe I should leave them like they are for another year. Thanks for any ideas!
You might be able to pot them up dormant in that condition. But fine tiny roots sounds like they may need more time. Mound soil over those branches and by next fall you’ll have a real tree ready for pot or moved to another location.
If they have real roots that now extend into the soil they could be moved next spring before growth begins.
He argues that the reason why we haven’t already seen this happen yet is b/c these cultivars are so long-lived – so therefore we haven’t been able to see them yet die en-mass – but the doomsday clock is ticking.