Results: Syracuse University: tree of 40 fruit
Published on 11/28/2017
(Source: Atlas Obscura) There’s an odd tree planted in a nondescript plot of mulch alongside the quad at Syracuse University. During the long central New York winter, the tree looks like any other: its branches barren, its trunk wrapped in a thick blanket of snow. But during the spring, it blossoms into a patchwork of pink, white, and red flowers. In the summer, it yields more than three dozen different kinds of fruit.
Do you know about any other tree that can produce more than one kind of fruit?
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Though it seems like the tree may be the secret parent of some sort of wild fruit salad, it's actually the work of artist and Syracuse University professor Sam Van Aken. It's a Tree of 40 Fruit, a Frankenstein mashup of art and science that, as its name suggests, produces 40 types of fruit. This particular model, called "Tree 75," is one of about a dozen others the artist has cultivated. Did you ever visit this unusual tree?
Yes
6%
115 votes
No
94%
1789 votes
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Tree of 40 Fruit bears a whole smorgasbord of sweet treats. Its many branches produce stone fruit such as cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, and almonds. Would you like to try the fruit from this tree?
Yes
58%
1106 votes
No
20%
380 votes
Undecided
22%
418 votes
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Van Aken began his project in 2008, after acquiring three acres of a soon-to-be-closing orchard run by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station. Rather than let the orchard's unique strains of stone fruit varieties become lost forever, he decided to preserve them by grafting their buds onto a single tree. He planted Tree 75 on the SU campus in 2011. Though it took a few years, the tree, which sports a mishmash of grafted branches from various donor specimens, now yields a diverse bounty. Did you hear about his work before this survey?
Yes
9%
180 votes
No
91%
1724 votes
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