I should try grafting Black Oxford to a wild crab rootstock here and see if the growth is any different than on Antonovka.
However, neither of my trees has produced any scion wood yet and at this point I’m not inclined to purchase any more.
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Black Oxford is one of the very few apples I’ve tried that just doesn’t thrive in my orchard, for whatever reason. (Kandil Sinap and - strangely - Pristine are the others.) Grafted in a good position on a vigorous mature tree, it languished for years and produced very little. I finally removed it a few weeks ago and grafted Clark’s Crab in its place.
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I understand that you don’t understand gift apples, but gift apples are nonetheless a fact.
Gift fruits of many kinds in Japan and China are a reality, and big business.
Chinese culture is not the same as US culture.
Japanese culture is not the same as US culture.
This is Takano, a Japanese store that sells only gift fruit:
The fruit is very expensive. This fruit basket costs 39,000 yen, or $290 US dollars.
Black Diamond apples are grown as gift fruits. The fruit that is not good enough to be gift quality is sold locally. The Black Diamond marketing scam is to pump up the price for BD gift apples.
The scam article saying that Black Diamond apples have high glucose levels and are thus very sweet is a joke. Apples generally do not have high glucose levels. They have high fructose levels. Red Delicious does not have high glucose levels so why would Black Diamond? Even if they had high glucose levels, glucose doesn’t taste very sweet compared to sucrose and fructose. The sweetest tasting apples are those with high fructose and sucrose levels. Fructose is about twice as sweet as glucose and about 1.5 times as sweet as sucrose.
When I attended the first international apple symposium in China I tasted at least 30 of the best Chinese apples and saw discussions or write-ups of at least 30 more. Black Diamond was not mentioned anywhere because it’s not in any respect a good culinary apple. No one in China is crying out to eat more Black Diamond apples and researchers are not using it in breeding culinary apples. What they’re breeding with are the best Chinese apples and the best western apples, such as Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala and Qinguan:
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They’re both fake.
These are real Black Diamond apples-
UV rays do not make apples sweeter. They do not change the color of the skin. UV rays help decrease damage to the skin of some fruits and help prevent some diseases, some fungi and
some pests, all of which are beneficial to growing GIFT FRUIT.
Cool nights can help some apples develop more sugars. That’s why the Pacific Northwest, western Colorado and upper New York state have apple growing regions. But they don’t change mediocre apples into great apples. Black Diamond is a mediocre apple.
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Interesting that this apple is all a big eleborate scam. Sunlight here does make fruit color up more and we know that very well. More sunlight and less rain makes our Kansas fruit very sugary. Variety makes a huge difference as well. Apples are never going to be perfect here on my farm, but i can grow some great pears. The side of my ayers exposed to sun is red and the side thats not is yellow. If you want them all red both sides need exposed. Same thing with arkansas black apples.
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The Black diamond apple is a real cultivar. It really has purple reddish colors.
It is really sold as a gift apple for higher prices.
It is being grown at high altitude because that makes it easier to produce gift apples without blemished fruit.
And literally everyone knows the sun can change colors of fruits. But it doesn’t change the fruit colors to colors that don’t already exist in the fruit.
The scam is the photoshopped pictures of Black Diamond apples.
The scam is the fantasy that Black Diamond apples have superior taste.
The scam is that Black Diamond apples are being grown at high elevation to produce their color and taste and can’t be grown anywhere else.
Here are Black Diamond apples grown in Nepal in FULL SUNLIGHT. They have colored up beautifully. There are NO light patches due to shading. They grow them in full sunlight because that creates better looking GIFT APPLES. They are nice looking apples but they have real colors, similar to many other “black” apples and DO NOT have the photoshop colors that everyone loves.
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Does anyone really believe the weight of the crop on that branch?
Bottom has five bumps, looks like red delicious to me
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It’s not Red Delicious.
The Chinese (and Japanese) frequently use support for branches but you can’t always see it in photos. They take extra precuations when growing gift apples so they are not blemished.
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Maybe, gift fruits box is big in Japan, but in China, when you visit a hospitalized patient, bring a small basketful of fruits is a token of caring, better than visit with empty handed. It is kinda equivalent of going to a party and bringing a cover dish with you.
I have been in China, Tibet, Nepal, I have never noticed , in areas where I have been, sales this black apple. If this apple is a real cultivar, but very likely is not that great taste apple. Maybe someone uses internet plus photoshop trying market it as a rare cultivar. However, any seeding apple is unique enough and can be classified as one and only .
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I wish I could find Jersey Black scionwood. That ones a unicorn.
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Clark, very interesting. If the black diamond also is called Huaniu, first of all, it’s not from Tibet, it’s not a Tibetan apple. Second, American apples were planted in 50s. In China. Do people remember what happened between American and Chinese in 50s? Korean War! American was No.1 enemy and still is. Peasants dare to grow anything that has anything to do with American or originated from America. I have heard stories of some foreign governments gave gift of mangoes, lemons to chairman Mao, but have never heard some peasants given American offspring apples to chairman Mao. This could be before my time, I missed that part of the history. I might do some digging. But anything at that time period has slight connection with American ( even if a third cousin live in America) is anti revolution, and could be prosecuted.
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天水从1925年就开始引进种植花牛苹果，种植历史较长，有着几代人的技术延续，使得天水出产的花牛苹果风味浓郁，光洁靓丽，质量均比原产地高上许多。
It is said in Wikipedia China. The Huaniu is foreign apple introduced to China in 1925.
I further looked the picture of product sold in the market. It is a red delicious to me
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Huaniu is sometimes called the Chinese Red Delicious because the fruit looks similar to Red Delicious. Huaniu is not Red Delicious.
Black Diamond is a seedling or bud sprout of Huaniu. It is not called Huaniu.
Yes, Chinese growers gave Huaniu apples to Chairman Mao. Huainiu is not an American apple. Hainiu is not Red Delicious. It looks similar to Red Delicious because that was the whole point of the Chinese breeding program - to breed a Chinese apple that looked similar to Red Delicious.
China has grown out many fruits and seeds from the US from 1950 to the present. They use the best genetics they can find in their breeding programs.
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I want the Diamond apple from Wales:
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That’s interesting.