Just wonder what do you think if we create a category or a sub-category showing only flowers of our fruit variety?
This would help many of us to know what flowers of that particular fruit variety look like. It can be used as a reference.
Say, when someone posts a picture of the flowers of a Red Baron peach, you could use it as a reference to identify your own Red Baron (or find out that yours is mislabelled).
In addition to the name of the variety, it should include the date when they bloom, the state and the zone where the tree is grown.
I for one would LOVE to see this. I canāt tell you how many times someone on this site someone (@olpea has done it 3 times!) has looked at a photo of one of my fruit trees in bloom along with my description of the tree by name, and informed me that no, it isnāt what I think it is. I had 2 twin peach trees that I bought as Red Haven and thought thatās what they were for 4 years until Olpea pointed out that red havenās donāt have the big showy blooms that these trees had. Its frustrating, but nice to find out.
In fact, this year on some of the trees Iām suspicious of I waited for them to bloom and then googled things like āRad Haven Peach Bloomsā and selected āimagesā. But the problem is even google searches will show wildly different blooms as being the same variety. Mostly that is because people who post photos from various sources (private blogs, personal web sites, etc) are often mistaken themselves about what they have. A site like this with so many experts would be far more helpful and accurate. Blooms are one of the best ways to rule out and help identify varieties. Having a nice collection of reference photos would be a huge asset and resource to this great web site, in my humble opinion.
Iām kind of surprised that we havenāt started our own fruit Wiki. It would be an easy way to share information on different varieties, to include such information as pictures of blooms or how a variety does in a certain region.
I like the idea, perhaps with the caveat that the category not only contain blooms, but other identifying characteristics, like harvest window and leaf glands (for peaches. Once that helped me identify a peach.) @scottfsmith, @alan, @hoosierquilt, @fruitnut, @MuddyMess_8a
I like the idea as well. Maybe a Fruit Identification category where each post could include pics of flowers, fruit, leaf, other identifying info of a particular variety.
Thatās a good point. I always like seeing blooms/ripening in relation to other well known varieties to get a better sense of when these events should happen.
Iām not exactly sure how to do this. Really some database format would be better, but we donāt have a database here. One idea is we could make categories like āapple varietiesā āplum varietiesā etc and then within those categories there could be one post per variety, with any and all information on that variety. The top entry could be a wiki with a template for recording stuff so people donāt have to scroll through the whole thing to figure out information. How does that sound? I think one of the fig forums has something similar for figs.
Great idea! If my buds were not frozen the other night and I have flowers I will take pics and post. I havenāt had the heart to go down to the orchard yet.
