We have planted two new fruit trees in the orchard. The information
tags for these are quite interesting, particularly the Pluot, so we
reproduce them for posterity here.
The Pluot is a Plum-Apricot cross; the fruit sound most exciting. A major incentive is of course the Mae-West theory, abbreviated here to "try whatever you have not tried before". We have never seen a Pluot for sale, so....
The tag text makes interesting reading. The thing is not genetically
modified, but it is genetically engineered. We speculate about the
line "asexual propagation strictly prohibited". Does this mean
"don't take cuttings, we've got it patented, so pay us to do that
instead, you bastard", or is it a warning against an activity that
might somehow screw up the gene line?
The plum is more conventional, and mostly selected because it is a
beautiful tree (like most Japanese plum tree species) and as a
fertiliser for the Dapple Dandy Pluot.
It is also a "Santa Rosa", presumably originalted by Luther Burbank,
but as the tag says, a natural mutant that appeared in 1969!