Trees That Bear Multiple Fruits

April 29 -- For urban dwellers who may as well think fruit grows in a supermarket, horticulturalists are developing trees that offer more fruit for your dollar — and space.

The so-called fruit salad tree sprouts as many as seven varieties of fruit in one tree. The combinations aren't quite as diverse as bountiful fruit bowls — apples and peaches, for example, can't mix. But the trees combine several members of fruit families into one.

A citrus version grows oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, tangelos, lemonades (a rounded fruit that's sweet like lemonade) and grapefruit. A stone fruit tree yields peaches, apricots, plums, nectarines, peachcots (a cross between peaches and apricots) and peacherines. The trees can be planted outside in small back yards (depending on their climate requirements), or kept in a pot. Most are self-pollinating so no partner trees or pollinating bees are needed.

"Houses are getting bigger and lots are getting smaller," said Lisa Bradford, a sales associate with Tsugawa Nursery in Woodland, Wash. "We think that's what's making these multiple fruit trees more popular."

New Trees, Old Concept

Tsugawa Nursery offers stone fruit salad trees, which it buys from Dave Wilson Nurseries in Hickman, Calif. Durling Nursery of Fallbrook, Calif. offers multiple citrus fruit trees. And James and Kerry West of the Fruit Salad Tree Company offer an ambitious line of mixed fruit trees through their orchards, based in Emmaville in New South Wales, Australia. The Wests have just begun marketing their trees to the United States through online shipping.

Not only do the trees offer a variety of fruit in one batch, the fruits' different harvesting times prevent a glut in produce at one period. That may be impractical for large fruit producers who need to harvest rows of trees at once, but it's tailor-made for those who simply want to pluck the fruit for their own eating.

Fruit salad trees may be growing more popular now, but the technique used to craft them — grafting — is nearly as old as fruit tree growing itself.