Popcorn Popping on the Aprium Tree

The Royal Rosa Apricot and Flavor Delight Aprium are blooming in pale pink - not really a typical popcorn color. Today was sunny, after a long string of variable weather. There's snow in the foothills, we've had some pretty good rain and there was a multi-car pile-up last Friday near Lemoore because of slush and hail on the roads. It snowed in Stockton. Unusual for February in California.

The bees were especially happy around the little Royal Rosa tree today. It is packed with showy bloom. I took a few blossoms over to the Flavor Delight tree in a vase, although I'm pretty confident at this point that the latter doesn't need cross-pollination. Royal Rosa isn't the best-tasting apricot in the world, but I'm keeping the tree as a pollenizer in case I ever get a Flavorella plumcot (fickle bearer, not available commercially, but one of Zaiger's favorites - from France) or one of the newer Apriums. Goldkist apricot is the best-known pollenizer in the U.S. for precious Flavorella, and FloraGold also blooms in the same season. My FloraGold tree died.

The USDA and others are also reportedly working on a new generation of very sweet apricots, crossing our standard varieties with Asian cultivars. Some of the very sweet white apricots, in particular, are not self-fruitful, so maybe Royal Rosa could help out with one of them. It would be nice if we could move beyond some of the mediocre commercial apricot varieties, like Patterson, which we usually see here. Blenheim is the classic, but works best in the coastal valleys of Northern California - it's susceptible to sunburn and pitburn in our hot summer weather and brown rot anywhere there's humidity. The Fresno Bee once had an article which lauded an heirloom Valley apricot with a name which included "sugar". I've never run across it. Probably not tough enough to ship.

Bloom is just starting on our Flavor Supreme, Dapple Dandy, Flavor Queen and Geo Pride Pluots, plus the Burgundy plum. Wish bees liked plum blossoms as well as apricot blossoms. Last year, I think Flavor Supreme started before the other varieties. Variable weather during the winter season makes some difference in relative bloom times of various cultivars. The differences in bloom appearance between cultivars is interesting. "Japanese" plums are really complex crosses of several species of plums. You would think that the Pluots would tend toward bigger blooms from some apricot parentage, but that doesn't usually seem to be the case. Burgundy plum has big blooms (for a plum) in small, lax clusters. Flavor Supreme is packed (at full bloom) with smaller blossoms on shorter stems. But Burgundy generally sets more fruit than Flavor Supreme. Of course, it's self-pollenizing, while none of the Pluots are.

On my Pluot wish list: Emerald Drop and Splash. Wonder what a Nectaplum is like? More on my wish list for plums, etc., later. Fabulous stone fruit varieties are one of the consolations for living in this valley when the summer heat gets wicked. But the best gardens are always in our dreams, I think.