Growing an aprium from seed

socalnolympia

last year

I'm growing a seed from an aprium.

For those who may not know, an aprium is a (plum x apricot) x apricot cross, so is about 25 percent plum.

It will be interesting to see what fruits this tree eventually produces.

An aprium can be one alternative possibility for those in a climate that do not really get a lot of chill hours, since apricots typically require less chill, or can be more tolerant of inadequate chill, than plums usually can.

Conversely, it could also be considered as a possibility for those who live in colder climates, since apricots often do not do as well there, due to their early blooming and vulnerability to spring frost, so a little bit of plum in its ancestry may help.

The fruit itself was basically like an apricot except far more juicy and tender inside, and definitely had some noticeable plum taste to it. Very good, in my opinion.

Of course it will take a long time for a seed to grow into a tree that is ready to produce fruit. And it will be helpful to graft the tree on a special dwarfing rootstock, because if that is not done, the tree will have to grow very big, and take many more years, before it is ready to begin producing fruit. (being on rootstock helps divert some of the tree's growth into fruit production earlier in its lifespan)

And who knows if this tree will truly end up being an aprium. The parent tree could have been pollinated by some other plum or apricot tree in the vicinity, so there's a possibility this seedling tree could end up being a more complex hybrid.

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Comments (4)

chadinlg Zone 9b Los Gatos CA
last year
growers select from hundreds to thousands of seedlings for new cultivars so the odds are against you...
socalnolympia
Original Author
6 months ago
Here are two Green Gage plum seedlings.

The bigger one came from Golden Transparent Gage, while the smaller one came from standard Green Gage.

I asked plum "expert" Andy Mariani which one had the better taste, and he said usually normal Green Gage, but that Golden Transparent Gage (GTG) can slightly exceed it if the fruits reach full and peak ripeness. That it's not really so much better, but there is nothing better than GTG under optimal conditions. So I'll assume GTG might be the slightly better one to get for those who both want to be able to taste the absolute best and live in a warmer climate with long summers. But Andy Mariani says that even in his orchard, which gets between 400 to 800 chill hours, often his Green Gage trees struggle to be able to get enough chill. (Meaning it takes more years before the trees begin producing fruit, and some years the trees may not produce very much). You'll probably need very warm and longer summers to bring the GTG fruit to that optimal ripeness. (His orchard farm in Morgan Hill, CA, is pretty good for heat, but not the topmost best. Somewhere like the central Willamette Valley in Oregon, or the "wine growing" region in central southern Washington state would probably be more optimal.
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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
6 months ago
last modified: 6 months ago
From seed you won't know what the fruit tastes like until you try it. And that'll be a good few years down the road. Plums from seed are a gamble. They won't be clones of the parent.

My greengage produced these last year. It's long since lost its label but I believe it's Cambridge Gage. And it was bought as a grafted plant. Not grown from seed.

Fwiw we do not have long warm summers.
socalnolympia
Original Author
4 months ago

Growing some more seedlings.

Top are two seedlings from "Midnight Rose" Aprium (looks more like a pluot, and strangely had a genuine almost raspberry-like plum flavor).

bottom is from an ultra rare Golden Transparent Gage (a subcategory of Green Gage). I am told this plum variety might be the only one that can slightly exceed all the other Gages in flavor, but only if it achieves full and optimal ripening, with the disadvantage that there is a very short window between when it is fully ripe and at its peak flavor and when it is overly ripe and starts to drop.

I found it challenging to try to grow plums from seed. I was growing out many seeds, but squirrels ripped into many of them, apparently wanting to eat the seeds and dig out the dirt in the containers, then many of the additional seedlings seem to have rotted, perhaps because there was too much humidity with the plastic cover, but I was also worried about water stress from the soil drying out too fast in a container and not being able to continually keep frequently watering all the plants as often as may have been optimal. It almost barely seems worth the effort, with so many containers and seedlings, and so few of them surviving.

I am keeping these under the dappled shade of a tree, because at this time of year (summer) direct sun is probably too strong for the seedlings (and the soil would dry out too fast).