Matt,
Don’t you need another plum tree to cross pollinate your Santa Rosa or are you planning to do multi-grafts on it?
Tony
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I have other plums planted. But at this point, they have not exhibited noticable flower buds yet.
So my Santa Rosa might flower all alone this year-- jeopardizing its ability to fruit.
Your enthusiasm is infectious. I’m going to have to ask you to tone it down. (jk) 
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Matt, I just ate my second Es. Spitz. a week or so ago. You probably know already, but if not, wait to try it until its been stored a while. My first was just picked and it did not impress favorably. This one - well, now!
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It has taken some years for me to swerve away from the exuberant press about English apples and try more mainland European and American cvs.
Spokann (why do we spell it another way?) is quite dry in summer. 15% humidity common. Want to try Glockenapfel!
Thank you for the encouragement.
Only hours after making the comment about the mystery pollen parent of Honeycrisp, Nicholas Howard posted on FB NAFEX an e-article by Nature.com about DNA analysis and the subsequent sleuthing to deduce that parent.
MN1627 was the product of a cross of the ubiquitous Golden Delicious and Duchess of Oldenburg. The research did not seek markers for which was seed parent, but these were the two. MN1627 is no longer extant anywhere, according to U of Minn, and as of the posting, Apparently the U has contacted everyone who obtained MN1627 from them and no one indicates it is still living anywhere.
Duchess of Oldenburg gets some respect.
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Cool! So Honeycrisp has grandparents Northern Spy, Duchess of Oldenburg, Golden Delicious and Frostbite - 3/4ths famous.
Yeah, and D/O figures twice in lineage for Honeycrisp. It is one of the parents of Frostbite, which was known as MN447 (1921!) until its release in 2008.
One wonders if D/O will come into greater use for apple breeding as a direct consequence.
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Keepsake is one of the parents of Honeycrisp. The other was unknown… until now. Apparently, it is this mystery apple, MN1627.
Keepsake resulted from a cross of Frostbite and Northern Spy.
So Honeycrisp’s parents are Keepsake and MN1627.
And its grandparents are as you describe: Northern Spy, Duchess of Oldenburg, Golden Delicious, and Frostbite.
@NuttingBumpus-- Can you provide a link to the article? Most interesting.
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Yes, that’s the one. Difficult to decipher but the conclusion clear enough.
I’m starting to wonder if these sellers don’t notify the public of the patent expiration in order to keep selling more trees!
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Well, they don’t need or are obligated in any way to inform the public, Rob 
Patents on plants all last the same length of time, so if you know when it was issued, you’ll know when it’s off patent. Just about like anything else that is protected by a patent.
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Yeah, I understand that, but sometimes it’s difficult to actually look up when the patent was issued… at least for me it is.
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Well, you’ve come to the right place, Rob If you have troubles looking up a plant patent, just ask. There are a lot of very experienced folks who can help you find the patent you’re looking for. Not just provide you the link, but let you know how they found it, too.
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Thanks for surfacing this @NuttingBumpus and @Matt_in_Maryland. It was interesting to learn the methods used in that field.
For those without crops last year, thinning early may be very important to break a pattern of alternate bearing. I’m seeing very heavy set of flower buds on apple trees everywhere cropping was light or non-existent last year. If you don’t intervene, it could take years to balance out.
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Alan,
Never considered a bunch of those apples going into a biennial cycle. That makes sense. I also had not considered your apple crop sense things are so dicey here nothing is a given at this point. The weather may well thin the fruit for us.
In the humid region the weather is always more important than people realize. When you get the right combination and timing of sun and rain after bloom it can lead to the huge crop we got in 2015, where so many flowers not only set fruit, but produced relatively large fruit. Part of the disaster of last year was the overcropping of the preceding one, leaving even the late flowering varieties depleted, but most people entirely blamed crazy 2016 weather.
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