I’d think impossible, but who knows anymore.
I’d rather see osagexfig. Larger fruits, more cold hardy. I don’t know how you’d get fig pollen to try it, but the osage orange blossom looks like it would be super easy to apply pollen to.
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Oh yeah. chexfig may be hardy and interesting too!
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Olive grafted onto privet would be a good use of these billions of weeds.
I don’t have enough background to comment or suggest intelligently but there’s a huge interest in more perennial vegetables if that is something you’d like to explore. I’ve heard comments of some pears that weren’t sweet and tasted like potatoes, don’t we all need a potato tree? 
I’ve long wondered if there was a way to develop some frost hardy tomatoes or peppers by grafting (something like Grafting Eggplant onto Devil Plant – Deep Green Permaculture) or breeding with Physalis heterophylla. Please keep us posted. You folks are doing some fascinating and valuable experimenting.
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Yes, since AmericanXAsian Persimmons have been successfully hybridized (albeit with great difficulty)…I’ve always wondered about the other potential Texas hybrids here, like AmericanXTexas or AsianXTexas?
It’s an interesting question…because there are many zones where you can actually grow all 3 species!
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Or what about trying D. texana x D. nigra? Though that would require a dedicated greenhouse or two for anyone outside the tropics.
asianxtexas is what I’m attempting. Supposedly there is a texana in my area (only one known), so we’ll see how it goes. I’ve not done any approach grafting before, and my seedlings are veeerrrrry small diameter.
As for texanaxnigra, Would you be attempting to increase size and have the outer peel be black as well? Supposedly they can be similar in flavor, and only two zones of hardiness different, so there seems to be less benefit (to me at least). Nigraxvirginiana definitely has some appeal though.
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Personally I’d love to see daylilies crossed with phosphorescent mushrooms. Glow in the dark daylilies would be a pretty sight (especially given that daylily flowers only last a day, it would extend their bloom through the evening at least).
I’d also like to see the butterfly pea and a clematis variety crossed…(if only for the scandalous name such a cross would likely be given…) …Anyone ever tried the tea made from the blue butterfly pea?
i’d love to also see my passiflora citrina crossed with a good edible passionflower as well. Citrina reliably grows, flowers and fruits from seed for me in one season but the fruits are 1) small 2) insipid and 3) they explode when ripe. Bigger, tastier fruit that doesn’t shoot seed filled goo all over the area around the plant would be wonderful.
Scott
There really are diurnal and nocturnal daylilies.
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I would say the main reason to try it is they seem more similar in their characteristics, so might be more able to cross than the others, though I’m not aware of any genetic profiles confirming whether they are more closely related than other Diospyros species. Although their native ranges are near each other in Mexico, it appears they are non-overlapping, so natural crosses would be rare even if they are able to be crossed.
Hybrids could produce larger, better-tasting fruit than texana, but with better frost and drought tolerance than nigra. Personally, I’ve never tasted texana, but nigra is one of my favorite tropical fruits, so anything that makes it more available to zone pushers would be great.
Crossing nigra with virginiana would be very interesting, but they seem more distantly related based on physical features, so crossing might be a long shot.
Would really be nice to find any genetic testing that’s been done on Diospyros species to see if any others are promising candidates for crossing with the ones with more desirable fruit. Sometimes a hybrid will produce something completely different in flavor and appearance from either parent (e.g, babaco papayas), so it might be worth just trying some crosses to see what they produce even with species that have less desirable characteristics?
As far as I know, most Diospyros species are dioecious, making it relatively easy to confirm any seeds produced are crosses if you are careful with your experiment, so that’s another reason to consider other crosses in the genus in general.
Edit: here are some maps showing native range of various Diospyros species:
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There’s also a diospyros californica in Baja California which is more similar to the nigra in size, but texana in hardiness.
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Do you have a source for those traits of californica? The best I could find was A revision of neotropical Diospyros, which describes the californica fruit size as only “up to 3 cm in diameter” – I’ve had nigra fruit that were the size of a large grapefruit, so seems like no contest on that front, but definitely another species to consider. That journal article says that pre-columbian peoples may have crossed californica with sonorae “to improve fruit quality,” so that’s another cross worth thinking about.
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The ones in the lower right are American persimmons that I’d assume are 3 cm. That’d put the californica at least at 9 by my estimation.
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Interesting range map, but Diospyros virginiana extends through East Texas into North/Central Texas…so it’s odd they largely left it out of the entire state? Because, you definitely have it overlapping with Diospyros texana there.
Wow, would love to hear/see more about this one! But, I can’t find much on the interwebs about it?
Pretty rare. I only know of one individual that sourced seeds and I was intending to try to get some for my breeding project but got confirmation that grafted digna died on virginiana rootstock when exposed to cold, and I have no greenhouse. I assumed the same would be true for the californica, and the source has also said the germination rates are abysmal. Probably needs to be passed through the digestive system of an extinct groundsloth.
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could always try swallowing them whole yourself!
All the range maps I can find show it cutting off somewhere in eastern Texas, to varying degrees including some of central Texas:
Here’s the source for the earlier map:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-97121-6_11
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Yes, that definitely seems more accurate! I know they extend to at least as far west as I-35…not sure about beyond that? Not sure what the constraint is here…maybe ground that gets too rocky and alkaline?
I used to have some hybrids between Lima Beans and Phaseolus polystachios. They bloomed pretty well, and rather early after sprouting, but they never set a single pod. Perhaps I should’ve been more patient with them.
The Hybrid Jaboticabas (Red and Roxa, seemingly two separate hybrids between M. cauliflora and M. aureana) are said to be as tasty as the parents and precocious, blooming in 3 years instead of the usual 8. There’s a lot of diversity to explore among the Jaboticabas, and they do well in containers (although they like a water dish underneath). I killed my M. coronata by transplanting it, but I have other species to cross, and my red hybrid is bearing its first fruit (the Yellow one is entering the blooming stage).
I’ve been meaning to re-attempt Burbank’s Strawberry x Raspberry, but my raspberry died (after several years). My Alpine Strawberry is still alive, and I’m getting some raspberries soon. Untitled Document
Schoener’s Rose x Apple hybrid is intriguing, and seems counterintuitive to me (especially concerning the disparate haploid numbers), but I’d like to attempt it as well. Untitled Document
Given similar haploid counts and a shared branch of the family tree, there’s plenty of Rosa, Rubus and Fragaria species to test for hybrids, especially among the diploids.
And regarding animals… Chicken x Pheasant seems to have partial fertility (I think the females are fertile?). As a pet project, I’d love to introgress Melanistic Mutant ringnecks into Black Sumatra chickens, for a hybrid breed with minimal pheasant genetics, but visible pheasant influence in the phenotype. I think the results could be very interesting.
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Jaboticabas are also in the family with Pomegranate, chilean guava, and crape myrtle. I’d LOVE to have those guys be more cold hardy.
I would really love to see a study on why Sorbus is so promiscuous in the rose family freely hybridizing multiple others. That trait would be lovely to find elsewhere.