I have this weird voluteer peach tree. It’s planted on the west of a Harko Nectarine and a Tilton Cot volunteer on the south. All are only 2-3 feet from each other. Anyway, I thought the peach was a volunteer from my late Red Baron peach tree since it has red blossoms in Spring. However, the peaches are completely different. Obviously super late and they are small like plums; these peaches are clingstones, and not even as sweet and flavorful as RB. What is going on here? Could not getting enough sun be the reason? I thought maybe it was from some other weird peach we eat and happened to throw the seed out, but then I thought, no, we have never had a peach like this.
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Hi Rob,
I suspect it’s reverting back to one of its parents since you said it’s a volunteer. You might have been impressed with the fruit you consumed and planted the seed expecting a similar fruit? That’s my guess. The good news is that peach rootstocks are very good for growing other stonefruits. So you can easily graft it over to your favorite variety and make productive use of the rootstock. There are enough good grafting points that you can have a multiple variety plum, pluot, Plumcot tree
Dennis
Kent wa
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I’ve seen lots of anecdotes about peaches being “true to seed”, but it’s definitely no guarantee. Even if the seed is the result of self-fertilization, you can get a lot of variability in the offspring. In particular in the case of a peach produced by crossing two relatively distinct parents, you would expect the F2 (“grandchildren”) generation to be highly variable. As a really simplified example, If the parents were AA and BB for a certain trait, the F1 generation is AB. And then the F2 generation can either again be AB, or you can also once again get the AA and BB genetic combinations, which looks like what Dennis pointed out as
Since pretty much all modern fruit trees are propagated by cuttings, there’s a lot of heterozygosity in their genomes (you can think of this as phenotypic instability from generation to generation). This is in contrast to other crops that are grown from seed, like tomatoes. Tomato seeds are pretty reliably the same from year to year, because most tomato breeders will select from self-fertilized plants and keep this going for at least ~5 generations. After 5 generations the genome is so inbred that it’s about 97% homozygous, and so any offspring is genetically nearly identical to the parents.
Another possibility is that the seed that grew in your yard is the result of a cross with some other compatible stone fruit that was growing nearby, in which case it might be something completely new. Maybe you even got a peach x plum hybrid.
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Funny, I always thought stones were always true to type. I have grafted some varieties on it already. Let me know if you’d like some scions this Spring. I’m replacing the spot with a fig.
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Very interesting. Always thought stones were always true to type. These 3 trees are in between cherries and plum trees. Let me know if you want any scions come Spring.
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You’re right in your assumption, full sun would improve sweetness and flavor
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Not at all. I did plant 4 peach seeds to see what I would get. 3 out of 4 were not good and just used for rootstock. One was ok but not like the parent.
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Yeah, I get that, but to turn it into a clingstone and small like a cherry or plum?
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Like others have said, either reversion or crossbred. Anything can result. I planted 6 peach pits of a delicious fruit 40 years ago, 4 were similar and good. 1 was red leafed, sterile and ornamental, last was an unhealthy runt.
I recently planted many pits of a newer apricot, all were nasty, spiky, scrubby plants that didn’t resemble the parent in the least.
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I’ve certainly been enlightened today!
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