Quince rootstock were put into the ground yesterday

I had some quince rootstock sucker and I mounded shredded brush over their bases them last summer.  I also covered the pile of mulch with dog food bags.

Etiolation is how plants respond to darkness.  One happy outcome is that the sun does not destroy the growth regulators that would otherwise cause rooting.

Well, lookie here!

This is a bunch of rootstocks that I broke apart and planted.

Some were on the skinny side for roots

Others were well endowed.

While planting the rootstocks I noticed a couple of peach seedlings.

Close up of peach twig.

Some pears cultivars are compatible with quince, which results in a dwarf pear tree.  Here is a list of compatible cultivars from a reputable source.

Quince are staging a minor come back in their own right.  Part of that is a growing interest in middle-Eastern cuisine.

Quince cultivars

This is a cultivar named Claribel.  It was grown from seed collected in the Russian Federation...close to where the Battle of Stalingrad was fought.  Do you suppose it gets cold there?

The remainder of this post are lifted from a presentation Joseph Postman gave.

Postman lists 27 quince cultivars that were capable of surviving -30 F in December.  Four were capable of surviving -40F.  They did not test all of the cultivars in the collection but chose a cross section based on SSR genetic fingerprinting and a literature search looking for cultivars that had a reputation for being winter hardy.

This is the results of the SSR study.  It gives you a feel for the Quince "family tree".  The selections circled in green are ones that I am adding to my collection.  The ones circled in red are examples of multiple cultivars being genetically identical.

This is a compilation based on several years of data.

This is a gratuitous picture of a Quince.

An image taken at the ARS Quince orchard in Oregon