Fruit Cocktail: Tree Grows 40 Different Kinds Of Fruit

This is a suspect looking picture of one of artist Sam Van Aken's Trees of 40 Fruit, trees he's continuously grafted branches from different peach, plum, apricot, nectarine, cherry, and almond varieties to. Impressive, but nowhere near as impressive as a tree that can grow winning lotto scratchers.

At first, Van Aken combines a few types onto the root structure of a single tree, allowing his "working tree" to mature to at least two years old. Then he proceeds to add more varieties to the limbs in a sequence called "chip grafting." Van Aken inserts a budding branch into an incision in the working tree -- with a piece of tape, no less -- and allows the limb to function as a normal appendage of the plant. The process takes about 5 years per tree, and has yielded 16 "Trees of 40 Fruit" thus far.

Oh man, could you imagine if George Washington had chopped one of these down instead of a cherry tree? I doubt his dad would have let him live long enough to ever become president. And then who would have been our first president? "John Adams?" Oh God, don't even joke about it. Thanks to Jennifer, who agrees a tree that could grow mushroom and black olive pizza would be even more amazing.



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