Btw, the tree is going in its third year.
Marcel
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I just received budwood of an avocado tree found growing in that region of Switzerland, so I believe it! Thank you for sharing your photos here.
Because it’s a seedling, it isn’t really any variety (avocado seedlings tend to be fairly genetically diverse). If the parent tree was also seed-grown, then it’s already at least two generations removed from any named cultivar, and it’s going to be impossible to figure out the lineage by phenotype.
Those nodes do look somewhat dense, but not quite as tight as “Duke” seedlings often are, and your leaves look less pointy and pale than Duke seedlings usually are, so I doubt it’s seedling of Duke, though it could perhaps be descended from Duke or Duke7 (which was itself a seedling of Duke). Here’s an example of a Duke seedling:
Here’s another Duke seedling, this one is even more tight node spacing:
But honestly, it could be almost anything. I’ve had seedlings of Mexicola Grande that looked very similar to your tree, too, and I’ve seen tight node spacing on some seedlings of unnamed Mexican avocados. Its ancestry doesn’t matter too much. If it makes good fruit some day, you get to give it a new name!
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Hi
Thank you for your coment. In fact the seedling on your second picture looks very similar to mine. It may have duke in it.
What do you think, how many years could it take to start blooming?
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Very hard to know, avocados can sometimes flower in 3-4 years from seed, but also sometimes 20+ years. I’d say pot it up to a much bigger pot or plant it in the ground this spring. It may grow a lot faster once it’s in the ground.
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Somehow the shape of the leaves of my seedling look like poncho leaves, but larger ond thicker.
I ordered scion wood from fruitwoodnursery.com last winter of the hardiest varieties for grafting.
All of them have more or less the same shiny typ of leaves, only the poncho is a bit different. But this seedling looks different, like it’s going to be a tough plant with dick textured leaves which gives it a whole different look.
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That has not been my experience, cold-hardy avocados have a wide range of different leaf sizes, shapes, textures, and colors.
Some (Del Rio, Jade, Joey) have very fuzzy new leaves, some are more shiny (Aravaipa, Ganter, Teague), some are in between (Duke, Poncho, Stewart).
Del Rio is very pink in the new leaves, Duke has pale lime green new leaves, Jade and Aravaipa are more of a deep green. Duke does have a pink color in the new stems, though, but not the leaves.
Jade and Mexicola Grande both have very large leaves, Duke usually has much smaller, narrow leaves (though its immature seedlings sometimes have bigger leaves).
Aravaipa, Ganter, Joey, and Stewart all have fairly prominent leaf veins on their mature leaves (indentations for the veins), while Duke, Jade, and Teague have smoother mature leaves.
In terms of seedlings that look similar to your seedling, Mexicola Grande seedlings often look similar, too. Here’s one of mine from the fall before it got winter damage:
I’ll repeat that I doubt you’ll be able to figure out much about it’s lineage from phenotype. Even the fruit will likely look very different from the parent or grandparent trees, assuming one of those was even a named cultivar.
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Yes that one has some similarity to my seedling too. What ever it is Im excited about it and how it will turn out.
There in ticino where I colected the seeds are many different varieties growing close together. Mainly pure mexican plus some hybrids such as bacon.
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EDIT: The person who’s grove was referenced here has asked that I take down the photos of his grove, so I’m doing so.
Original post:
I am in touch with someone who knows the person who maintains that grove. I think “Opal” is one of the Mexican types there, and I’ve never grown Opal before so I’m not sure what the leaves look like usually.
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Yes, thats the place! Amazing how you found that one. I know him too, but unfortunatelly we got in a conflict with each other and he doesn’t wanna talk to me anymore.
Bill Schneider himself was there many years ago and thats how those mexican avocados came here, since there is no nursery selling them in europe until lately.
There are many different varieties for sure. Such as lila, poncho, wilma, topatopa, bacon and some others.
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One of the new varieties I grafted this year was sent by the owner of that grove to our mutual contact, they call it “Brissago” and it was supposedly found growing on the grounds of a senior center somewhere nearby. I don’t know if those grafts have succeeded yet.
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Brissago is a place a 15 minutes drive south of the garden on the picture. A good friend of mine lives there, where I go once a year or so. Its one of the mildest spots in my country with similar lows like what you can expect at your place.
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What do you think makes the difference for those avocados trees in Brissago? The average temps are nearly identical to areas west of the Cascades, though Brissago gets considerably less winter days of rain. Is it possible that the average temps posted for that region of Switzerland are not reflective of the temps right at the immediate shoreline of Lake Maggiore? Even if that’s the case I can’t imagine it doesn’t sometimes freeze. I’ve seen pictures of that lake in winter and it’s hard to believe the shoreline isn’t also freezing.
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The grove that is pictured is at the base of a high, south-facing stone wall immediately next to a large lake, so that microclimate likely gives quite a temperature boost. That area is in a small pocket of zone 9a according to the PlantMaps version of the Swiss zone map.
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Are you aware of any weather stations set up exactly where avocados are growing in the Brissago region? That would be excellent data. I’ve been reading about the climate over there and the phenomenon of sunny winter breaks seems like it could be significant. Since there are also pockets of zone 9 in Seattle and Portland this hints at the possibility that the low temperature might not be a comprehensive explanation for the outcome.
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Especially the western lake shore from Ticino in Switzerland, where those Avocado trees are down to Verbania in Italy are very mild. As I know the lowest in the last 30 Years was -6 Celsius/ 21f maybi a bit colder at some places. 400m above the lake at the forest line where my frind lives it went down to -11C/12f.
That was in the winter 11/12. His lows are in the most years between -4 to -7C or 25f to 19f.
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And we can probably assume it is even slightly warmer right at the waterline where the avocados grow in Switzerland. I was also forgetting about the avocado trees that grow in London. The winter climate in London is just as cloudy as Seattle’s and the avocado trees grow very big by the Thames. Though if I recall correctly someone on this thread mentioned that the avocados growing in London are perhaps in a zone 10. That data makes me even more surprised that there aren’t a few avocado growing and thriving in isolated pockets around Seattle or Portland.
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*yet 
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Yet indeed. Totally on board with that. Dare to reimagine.
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I would start with Port Townsend. It’s zone 9a, south facing, and on the water
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I have two members of the project in that area getting trees this spring! Though one of them is closer to Port Angeles.
I think there are south-facing slopes all around the coast of the Salish Sea that can be very similar microclimates to that grove in Switzerland, and hopefully eventually we’ll be able to test that theory.
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