I think that would be highly improbable. Variety names are given by many different people and generally not follow any rigid structure. It would be very unusual if all these different breeders followed the same convention to use “Hale” in the name of a variety only if it had sterile pollen. It’s much more likely that “Hale” in the name was used simply when a variety was an off-spring of “J.H. Hale” and at least some of these off-springs should be self-fertile due to the fact that the respective gene is recessive.
Yes. I think that’s right. They just used Hale in the name because it was an offspring of J.H. Hale.
I don’t know that much about the pollen sterile gene, but I would have guessed that perhaps they assumed that J.H. Hale had two dominant pollen sterile genes, so that any offspring would be pollen sterile?
Again, I’m no longer making a case that any siblings with Hale in the name are pollen sterile (you make a good case with your analysis of Dick Okie’s comments and have persuaded me) just offering an explanation as to why maybe it’s reported in the literature (evidently erroneously) that anything with Hale in the name is pollen sterile.
I would guess it’s just an over-generalization. Reminds me of a joke about how an experimental physicist proves that all odd numbers are prime numbers: “1 - prime, 3- prime, 5 - prime, 7 - prime, 9 - an error of the experiment, 11 - prime, 13 - prime. QED”.
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Due to a little bit of a miscommunication with the person caring for my trees, this tree has been transplanted to a new location and pruned down to about 8" above the graft to make sure all portions of the tree infected with whatever was killing it were removed. Now it is just a wait and see if it lives and produces any new growth from what is left of it.
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This continues to interest me, perhaps because I’ve read several sources that got it wrong. Today, in doing some reading, I came across a reference that Dixired peach is an offspring of a self-pollinated Halehaven (I also found that Dick Okie lists the same pedigree for Dixired.)
More confirmation that Halehaven is a self-pollinated variety, and only carries the recessive gene for pollen sterility (designated PS/ps). As you point out, pollen sterility is recessive to pollen fertility.
J.H. Hale is homozygous (ps/ps) which is why it’s pollen sterile. Halenhaven does indeed carry the pollen sterile gene since it is an offspring of J.H. Hale, but is heterozygous (PS/ps).
As would be expected about half of the open crosses from J.H. Hale are pollen sterile. (See page 31.)
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43893577/PDF
Thanks again Stan for the info. You debunked a peach myth I’ve read for a long time.
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