Sudeep Singh
26 July, 2015:
New York art professor and Syracuse University professor Sam Van Aken has created an amazing tree that can bear over 40 different types of fruit and can yield different colored blossoms.
This tree was created by using the technique “sculpture through grafting”. With patience, over several years, Van Aken spliced branches with buds from different fruit trees, grafted it into similar-sized hole on the “working tree” or the host tree. The branch is taped in place and left to assimilate with the host over the winter months.
Now, by springtime, the tree sprouts different color blossoms and in the summer, the tree begins to bear fruit of different kinds including peaches, nectarines, apricots and almonds.
“I can design and essentially sculpt a tree and how it blooms,” said Van Aken. “Part of the idea behind the Tree of 40 Fruit was to plant them in locations that people would stumble upon them, and once they happened upon one of these trees, they would start to question ‘Why are the leaves shaped differently?’ ‘Why are they different colors?’”
Watch a video about this tree below:
