xu zhou, which has been getting some good reviews production-wise.
r4t3 below tends to be longer and more pointy
while ga-866 below tends to be similarly cylindrical but somewhat more tubby
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My Lang tree has not one fruit this year except for the grafted limbs on it…I have one fruit of each Black Sea, Coco, R4T3 on branches grafted onto Lang.
Alcalde #1 has NO fruit but has grown about 3 foot.
NO Orange Beauty.
NO Autumn Beauty ( except a few on a graft growing on Li)
Texas Honey (Honey Jar Seedling) has more fruit this year than last year. Not a lot.
Mango Dong Zao (JF&E) has a few fruit
Contorted Seedling in orchard has a few fruit
SiHong seedling has NO fruit (2017)
Li x 2 have fair amount of fruit. Contorted (7ft) has 4 fruit. And Sugar Cane (7ft) has maybe a dozen. Chico has fair amount of fruit…maybe half as many as last year. Redland’s #4 has a few fruit. Honey Jar has MAYBE 1/3 as many fruit as last year.
Can you hear me WHINING???
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Nice photos @k8tpayaso! Btw, if fremember it right, alcalde is the same as autumn beauty. Couldnt remember where got that info though
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Whining? To some people you are winning!
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Oh? I hadn’t heard that. In that vein, though, it is my understanding that Black Sea is the same as Russian #2.
More mysteries.
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Alcalde #1 is one of the NM university patented varieties. I was told I could not clone it without permission (fee, that is…)
This is true… be thankful…
Wow, if it really is the same as ogw’s autumn beauty, which was trademarked by ogw, then we have a proprietorship problem here. Who owns what now, really? And have given away autumn beauty scions almost ever year
I don’t think they are the same. The Alcalde is more of just an oblong shape. I haven’t tasted them side by side so can’t attest to that but I had a couple of alcalde last year and I would say they are different ripening times too.
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Finally found it, the journal below pertains to alcalde as qiyue xian, which is the non proprietary name for ogw’s autumn beauty if my memory serves me right
The plot thickens lol
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Forgot to ask @k8tpayaso, as couldnt see the thorns on the pic of your alcalde. Are they on the long side and tilted forward or distally?
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The reason you cannot see the thorns in my picture is because they are almost nonexistent. I hard to look hard to find any.
ALCALDE
AUTUMN BEAUTY from OGW
I won’t be able to say on fruit this year… no alcalde fruit unless it as a late flush. @Bhawkins has both in Dallas.
And here is a quote from your referenced study:
Alcalde #1’, ‘Li’, and ‘Chico’ were thornier than other cultivars,
My trees have had a big growth spurt this year and neither of them have set one fruit. Structure of the trees are very similar.
Alcalde
Autumn Beauty
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yeah this is the worrisome part, as when i did a bit more sleuthing of NMSU’s website, the magnified photo of the second pic posted as alcalde’s thorns look quite the same as ogw’s autumn beauty. And the fruits as well, showing up as relatively large fruits of cylindrical forms with wide girths and relatively flat on one dimension(the z-axis) but broad on the the other dimension(x-axis), while its overall length is relatively long(y-axis).
The same as the ogw autumn beauty that you have, and the ogw autumn beauty that i have.
anyway, encircled below are the thorns enhanced from NMSU’s second photo of alcalde branches Hopefully it was just a clerical error by nmsu website(or error by your alcalde source)
and below are my autumn beauty from ogw, note the fruits and thorns similar to what you have. The thorns are also forward tilting and quite long
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and thought i’d post @Bhawkins correspondence with ogw from several years ago …
i had a similar conversation with their new management when i ordered another black sea, massandra, and autumn beauty
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I can’t really say that the fruits are dissimilar since both trees have been very stingy with fruit and the alcalde last year was very stressed and actually the late fruit was from a delayed bloom. So…another mystery. I will have to say that there were a few small branches on my AB that actually had small thorns that matched the small thorns on the alcalde but most branches had the presence of the large forward slanted spikes. I have two more AB’s that I grafted last year With scion from Cliff England that the old wood has the large thorns but the new growth does not.
IF… these do turn out to be so similar then it sure takes some strength out of the registered trademark for NMSU. ???
I remember reading the @Bhawkins thread regarding Winter Delight. I have the Mango Dong Zao from JF&E and it’s fruits and thorn characteristics match my AB. I also have grafts from @castanea ‘s Winter Delight which had a fruit until last week when it dropped.
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thorn length may be influenced by rootstock, but i only have anecdotal evidnece from what have seen on some juju grafts. The pictures posted by nmsu as qiyue xian, which was renamed and trademarked as alcalde, look exactly the same as that of the qiyue xian trademarked as autumn beauty by ogw.
i actually think they are the same, primarily because the long and distally tilting thorns are unique. Have been watching juju thorns for many years(all >70 cultivars of them) and haven’t really seen anything as distinctly stereotypical as the forward tilt of thorns that are ~1.5" long or greater. For two sources to sell or post pictures of a cultivar exhibiting just that, and both of them with the chinese name qiyue xian that bear similarly sized and shaped fruits, i will have to conclude both claimants trademarked the cultivar qiyue xian as autumn beauty and alcalde.
of course, it is possible that the “true” qiyue xian has short thorns, and that the pics at nmsu website were posted by mistake(probably posted ogw’s qiyue xian with the distinctive thorns).
conversely, also posible that ogw’s qiyue xian with long thorns is the real deal, and that alcalde is not the true qiyue xian but actually another cultivar with short thorns, just like the tree you already have which has tiny, if not negligible thorns
below is nmsu’s webpage with the picture i hightlighted above. The first entry Alcalde being aka’d as qiyue xian
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My oldest Autumn Beauty has very tiny thorns, 0.1-0.2". My Alcalde#1 was only planted this spring, its only grown a foot so who knows what it will do in the future; no thorns that I can see; but its covered in flowers, maybe I’ll get a few fruit
Hopefully Prof Yao publishes the results of her genetic testing soon. Here’s a picture of an Alcalde #1 from her workshop last fall, its looks a little different from my Autumn Beauty, but its hard to say for sure from a pic.
fwiw, my Coco, Xu Zhou, Autumn Beauty, Shihong, Contorted So, & Honey Jar have branch breaking loads this year. But the Chico’s only have only a few fruit; weird. I should get my first real Winter Delight this summer.
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Thanks for posting that @Bhawkins. Ogw’s autumn beauty fruits do look similar to the alcalde fruits in the picture you just posted.
Anyway, looking forward to your updates re: your alcalde tree
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Just looked at a 3 year old Autumn Beauty OGW. Has a few 1/2" thorns, looking forward; but not many. Light load of fruit. The tree mentioned earler is 11 years old.
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