08/30/2025
💜 MELTING POT FRUITS 💜 by Andrew Mariani
The famous plant breeder Floyd Zaiger and his family developed many new types of fruits over the years. Perhaps best known are their pluots, a combination of plum and apricot. These are not genetically modified or so-called frankenfruit as some critics might claim. Similar hybrids occur naturally where the native ranges of two fruit species intersect resulting in spontaneous hybrids like an apricot and plum cross called black apricots. The Zaigers have simply augmented the natural process of hybridizing various stone fruit species.
They have also created other hybrids like pluerries, a plum-cherry combination. Flavor Punch is one of the newest. It is a pluerry in name only, since it also has some apricot and peach in its genetic makeup. Like the nature of America itself with many citizens having multi-ethnic roots and diverse genetic backgrounds, Flavor Punch is the result of a melting pot of different fruits—something new and exciting and appropriately called “punch” implying a blend of several fruits. This late ripening fruit is firm and juicy with a flavor that can only be described as a fusion of several outstanding flavors. We will have a few of these Flavor Punch fruits available this week.
Our Flavor Punch trees are still quite young. They’ll happily produce more and more fruit each year. The Zaigers have been busy creating even more of these new “melting pot” types of fruit. They will be introduced in the next few years and will find a ready market among those who appreciate interesting, highly complex fruit flavors.
We have some Crimson Royale and Flavor Gr***de pluots. And a limited quantity of Flavor Punch pluerries (1st photo). Among the European plums, we are finishing up the Green Gage, which is justly famous for its outstanding flavor, and the French Mirabelle plums, that are enjoyed fresh or in desserts.
Other European plums are ready; the Stanley plum and the famous French D’Agen prune-plum that is usually dried, but there are many fruit lovers who like its sweet, rich flavor when eaten fresh. We also have smaller quantities of new hybrid European plums like Yolo Gold (2nd photo).
