The Fruit Hunters Read online

  As we sit on a picnic table, eating some homemade bread and cheese with tomatoes, red peppers and herbs from the garden, I tell George about an exhibition I had just seen at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was a retrospective of art by the Haida people, a First Nations tribe inhabiting an archipelago sixty miles west of the British Columbian coast. Traditionally, all of their daily objects—canoes, clothes, utensils, oars—were crafted into beautiful art objects. Flipping through one of the books in the gift shop, I came across a Haida saying that had etched itself into my memory banks: “Joy is a well-made object, equaled only to the joy of making it.” Zebroff, pouring us a glass of homemade plum mead, nods his head. “That’s our creed right there.”

  WE’RE CURRENTLY LIVING in an era of mass extinction. With the ongoing devastation of the rain forests for timber, paper or cattle ranches, we’re losing an estimated 17,500 species every year. Species are disappearing before they’ve ever been documented.

  But extinction is also a natural phenomenon. Ninety-nine point nine percent of species that ever lived are now extinct. Nearly all of them disappeared before humans were even around. We can only imagine what most of those species might have been—but we can also appreciate the abundance that’s still all around us.

  Farmers help maintain diversity merely by growing certain varieties. David Giordano of Giordano Farms has saved Moorpark apricots by propagating them from the same rootstock his father used when growing them in the 1920s. “You can get Moorparks elsewhere, but they’re not like mine,” he told me. “I’ve preserved them.” Despite being tinged with green, his Moorparks have an unrivaled flavor. “People roll their nose when they see it,” says Giordano. “And then I’ll give them a sample and they’ll say, ‘Oh my God!’ It goes from total skepticism to ‘How many can I buy?’”

  The best way to preserve a fruit is to create a demand for them. After all, fruits want to be eaten in order to propagate. All consumers need to do is want them. Indeed, many fruits believed to be obsolescent are still thriving on small farms. In the 1970s, Kent Whealy of the Seed Savers Exchange—who popularized the idea of heirloom fruits and vegetables—started getting requests for Moon and Stars watermelon seeds, a particularly sweet variety that had been popular in the 1920s. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any. Word got around that the watermelon was extinct. In 1980, a farmer in Macon, Missouri, named Merle Van Doren, contacted Whealy to say he was growing the variety. It has now become one of Seed Savers Exchange’s bestselling heirlooms, growing in countless backyards.

  The Montreal neighborhood where my mother lives, Notre Dame de Grace, used to be farmland covered in a special type of melon that commanded high prices in fancy New York eateries in the early twentieth century. When the farms were swallowed by residential properties after World War II, the Montreal melon disappeared. Or so everyone thought. Letters were sent to the world’s seed banks. In 1996, a package of seeds arrived from the University of Ames, Iowa. They were planted by Windmill Point farm, and a melon patch has been set up behind the Notre Dame de Grace YMCA called the Cantaloupe Garden.

  Every year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) releases their “Red List of Threatened Species.” Of the nearly twelve thousand plants that are facing extinction, most are angiosperms, and hence have fruits. Some of the fruits in danger include the cambucá from Brazil’s Atlantic rain forest, a number of Middle Eastern date palms, five different Turkish pear species and thirty-five species related to the mango.

  A group called Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) compiles their own Red List of more than seven hundred uniquely North American plant and animal foods that are at risk of extinction, such as the highly flavored Marshall strawberry and the Seminole pumpkin. It doesn’t help that government regulations hamper older varieties’ commercial potential. Despite its unique honeylike flavor, the Pitmaston Pineapple Apple is too small to be sold in the EU. In Europe, all seeds that are sold must be part of the registry of seeds, but prohibitive registration fees keep many heirloom varieties from the formal economy. As the Independent reports: “It becomes illegal to sell them; so, with no growing plants providing seeds for the future, they’re simply becoming extinct.”

  But the hype over extinct fruits is often overblown. The vanished Taliaferro apple, for example, is often held up as a tragic symbol of what we’ve lost. Thomas Jefferson described it as his favorite cider apple, yielding a silky champagnelike potion. A little digging, however, reveals that it may still be around.

  “I have been seeking it for many decades, as did my father before me,” Tom Burford writes in an e-mail exchange. “In the past twenty years, four candidates have emerged that reflect the description in the scanty and conflicting literature about the apple called Taliaferro.” It’s the Anastasia of apples, with multiple contenders purporting to be heiresses to the tsarist throne of Russia.

  “It is agreed among the few that have pursued it so fervently that until it is defined further by perhaps the discovery of a document, it will be difficult to hang the label on any one candidate.” In other words, even if it isn’t exactly the Taliaferro, there are four cider apples that fit Jefferson’s description—and churn out silkalicious cider.

  According to the IUCN, Malus siversii, the primary ancestor of the cultivated apple, is also facing extinction. But as I found, it has also been protected, despite the pressures on its natural habitat.

  THE NATIVE HOME of sweet wild apples is the Tian Shan mountain range in between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang. The densest concentration of these apples is found outside the town of Almaty, meaning “rich with apple.” (It was known as Alma-Ata during the Soviet era, meaning “father of the apple.”) Having weathered millennia of changes in weather and pests, these trees carry traits that could be used to prevent a disaster in our food chain. With a population nearing 2 million, the silk route’s urban sprawl has been encroaching on these ancient apple forests.

  Fortunately, American fruit hunters have spent the past decade combing the wilds of Kazakhstan to collect the genetic pool of apples endemic to the region. Philip Forsline, the curator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s apple collection in Geneva, New York, oversees 2,500 varieties, including an orchard of primeval apples from Tian Shan. He is certain that the apples he brought back will be used in breeding new and resistant fruits in the years to come.

  Geneva is a living museum, with rows upon rows of different apple trees planted side by side. “This is diversity,” says Forsline, showing me the collection. “Geneva is Kazakhstan re-created.”

  Geneva is one of America’s twenty-six germplasm repositories. Germplasm is the technical term for active tissue that can be used to grow new plants: seeds, stems, clippings, pollen, scions, cells and DNA. Half a million different plants are backed up by America’s National Plant Germplasm System. The seed vault in Fort Collins, Colorado, contains the country’s primary agricultural insurance plan: nearly five hundred thousand samples of germplasm, many cryogenically preserved in temperature controlled tanks of −196°C liquid nitrogen.

  There are more than 1,400 seed banks around the world. Such institutions, often founded or staffed by amateur enthusiasts, play an enormous role in conservation efforts. Older varieties will be used to breed crops that can keep up with global warming, mutating pests and other threats. As Jack Harlan, a plant hunter who collected more than twelve thousand varieties in over forty-five countries, once wrote, “These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine. In a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on these materials.”

  The worldwide network of botanical gardens is humanity’s effort to preserve our plant heritage. Because many of them are in politically unstable regions, their genetic material is in danger. Iraq’s seed bank, which had been located in Abu Ghraib, was demolished during U.S. attacks, but not before two hundred valuable seeds were shipped to Syria for safekeeping. One of the most ambitious conservation e
ndeavors ever attempted by humanity is a seed bank near the North Pole that aims to create a genetic backup of the world’s most important plants.

  Located inside a permafrost-encrusted cave in a hollowed-out mountain on the frozen island of Spitsbergen, Norway, the Svalbard International Seed Vault is a safety net for humankind’s agricultural heritage. In case of a global catastrophe, this glacial Noah’s Ark could help re-create the world’s crops. Should that fail, an organization called the Alliance to Rescue Civilization is developing a laboratory on the Moon containing the DNA of every life-form on Earth.

  UNTIL THE DISSOLUTION of the Soviet Union, the genetic base of pomegranates, which grow wild in the Kopet Dag mountain range east of the Caspian Sea, was centered at an agricultural research station called Garrygala in Turkmenistan. The facility was overseen by Gregory Levin, the world’s premiere punicologist. Having traveled to dozens of countries in search of pomegranates, his collection included black, purple and peachy-pink varieties, as well as the seedless Shami, and the super-sweet Saveh, said to be bigger than a baby’s head. In the post-Soviet turmoil, Levin was forced to flee Garrygala, minus the 1,127 specimens he spent a lifetime nurturing. Luckily he’d sent backup copies to botanical gardens around the world, so his work has been conserved by, among others, the germplasm repository at the University of California at Davis.

  Similarly, when a civil war erupted in Georgia in 1993, the area’s seed bank was destroyed, but not before eighty-three-year-old conservationist Alexey Fogel managed to flee through the Caucasus mountains bearing 226 subtropical fruit samples, including the town of Sochi’s complete lemon collection. Others have sacrificed their lives to protect genetic resources. When Nikolai Vavilov’s repository was on lockdown during Hitler’s siege of Leningrad, peanut specialist Alexander Stchukin and rice collector Dmitri Ivanov chose to perish of starvation rather than eat the precious seeds.

  The need to conserve fruits leads people like Maine’s John Bunker to roam the countryside looking for vanishing apples such as the Fletcher Sweet, which he found on a tree with only one live branch left. Italian arboreal archaeologists maintain collections of fruits dating back to the Renaissance. There’s even a father-son team in Britain who walk along the side of the M1 Highway in order to sample the fruits on trees that sprouted from apples thrown out of car windows. The Brazilian fruit photographer Silvestre Silva spent ten years searching for the white jaboticaba. He finally found a plant near the town of Guararema. Rescued from the brink of extinction, the white jaboticaba has been propagated, and will be bearing fruits sometime in the near future.

  Many fruit preservationists have superhero-like alter egos, whether it’s “Lemon” Craig Armstrong, “Bananasaurus” Rick Miessau, Franklin “the Fruit Doctor” Laemmlen, Adolf “the Reticent Plantsman” Grimal, Ed “the Mangosteen Man” Kraujalis, or J. S. “the Mayhaw King” Akin. I can almost imagine “Mr. Fertilizer” Don Knipp having a wrestling match against Chiranjit “the Lesser-Known Plant Person” Parmar.

  Fruit conservation groups are often informal, grassroots citizen science affairs, like the Society to Save British Fruits, the Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Forgotten Fruits, the Fig Interest Group or the Rare Pit Council.

  The Paw Paw Foundation is devoted to the biggest edible tree fruit in North America. Growing from Ontario to Florida, it vaguely resembles a banana, having greenish-yellow-brown skin and a custardy interior. Lewis and Clark survived their trek across the American interior by eating wild “poppaws.”

  The North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) is one of the biggest American amateur fruit associations. The organization started as an alternative to the homogenizing efforts of postwar pomologists. As older varieties were excommunicated from the frigid temples of commerce, a Brotherhood of the Fruit came together.

  According to the NAFEX Handbook for Fruit Explorers, all members are “devoted to the discovery, cultivation and appreciation of superior varieties of fruits and nuts.” They grow Tom Sawyer’s favorite apple or the huckleberries Finn was named after. They run backyard research programs. They are fruit pioneers who do it for the spirit of experimentation, not for profit. They don’t care what people say about fruits not growing in particular areas—they find ways to make them grow. Professional pomologists mainly work on creating fruits that are aimed at the grocery store cold chain. Not NAFEX—they’re amateurs on a quest for excellence in fruits.

  “Mysterious and little-known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit,” writes E. O. Wilson. NAFEXians are devoted to underappreciated oddities like maypops, a type of passion fruit that bursts when squeezed. The fruits of the chocolate vine, as one member says, look like fat purple bananas that “split open to reveal white flesh and a bead of goop surrounding watermelon-like seeds. What’s not to like?”

  Just listing some berries will give a rough idea of how many indigenous fruits we’ve never tasted: crackleberry, whimberry, bababerry, bear-berry salmonberry raccoon berry, rockberry, honeyberry, nannyberry, white snowberry and berryberry. The dangleberry is a juicy, sweet, blue-black berry. The treacleberry, tastes like molasses. The lemonade berry is a Southwestern U.S. berry that Native Americans used to make pink lemonade. The moxieplum is a white berry with a subtle wintergreen flavor. The cloudberry is known as the bakeapple in Atlantic Canada. This name can be attributed to a visiting French botanist. Seeking to identify the fruit, he asked a local what the berry is called, saying, “la baie—qu’appelle?” The Newfoundlander thought the Frenchmen was telling him the berries’ name, so it became known as the bakeapple.

  For NAFEXians, it all comes down to flavor. Their handbook explains that most consumers have no idea what they’re missing: “This is one of the small tragedies of modern life.” As many of them have learned, however, it’s a short step from being botanically inclined to becoming a fullblown fruit freak. Die-hard members call themselves “the hard core.” As former vice president Ed Fackler once cautioned, “FRUIT VARIETY COLLECTING IS VERY ADDICTIVE!”

  Members of the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) are also fruit junkies. A national association with thousands of members and chapters all over the country, the CRFG produces that bimonthly bible of fruit fetishism, Fruit Gardener, a magazine bursting with luscious full-color fruit porn. The magazine’s ads are like something out of the adult classifieds. “Wanted: rare fruits, will pick up, call Mike,” or “ATTENTION TROPICAL GUAVA FANCIERS: true INDONESIAN SEEDLESS guava available soon! Preorders now accepted!”

  In a recent issue of Fruit Gardener, Gerardo Garcia Ramis wrote of people “characterized by an obsession with fruits, a desire to grow 200 species in the backyard, to get every single book with the word ‘fruit’ printed in it. You know the type. Well, that’s me.” Spending days going through every back issue of Fruit Gardener, I learned that devout members of the CRFG describe themselves as true believers, the neurotic fringe or heavy hobbyists. The more academically inclined among them use the term “fruit votary.” A votary is someone devoted to the point of addiction to a particular pursuit. It can also mean a fanatical adherent of a religion or cult.

  Many of these true believers aren’t comfortable discussing their interest in fruits, as I found out when I called the CRFG’s Registrar-Historian. C. Todd Kennedy is referred to variously as a “leading Californian fruit preservationist and historian,” a “rare fruit expert,” a “renowned fruit connoisseur” and a “fruit rescuer.” Excited to speak to him, I quickly understood why the organization also describes him as the “Fruit Crank.” He told me that he isn’t even passionate about fruits. He only rescues old varieties, he said, out of force of habit. At one point in our conversation, which consisted mainly of monosyllabic answers on his end, he snapped at me. “What were you hoping for—some brilliant breakthrough?” “No, just some stories,” I managed, picking up the receiver, which had clattered to the floor in surprise and dismay.

  Undeterred, I joined the association and started attending CRFG chapter me
etings. One took place in the backyard gazebo of a Victorian mansion near Oxnard, as Mexicans labored in the background. The topic was fruits from South Africa. The half dozen attendees were all octogenarians. “We’re basically a bunch of rich old men,” one of them joked. Even so, they’re also concerned with preservation. As Bill Grimes, the association’s president, writes: “We are the instruments for genetic diversity, and the preservation of wonderful cultivars of fruits and vegetables not considered marketable or lacking genetic implants.”

  The second gathering was held in a San Diego church basement, with about fifty attendees milling around, looking at rare fruits piled on a picnic table. A frail old man approached me as I perused some fruit books on display. He called me “young blood” and said it was important that more young people get interested in fruits, but he understood why it appealed to the elderly. “When you are old and you want something to do with your time,” he said, his phlegmatic voice oscillating, “growing fruit trees is a great thing to do.”

  The evening’s main speaker was Dario Grossberger, a specialist in cherimoyas, a fruit from the Andes that Mark Twain described as “deliciousness itself.” Beneath their scaly green skin, cherimoyas have a white flesh that tastes like pear cream custard. “Ten years ago, ignorant of cherimoyas, I ate one,” said Grossberger. “I loved it. Like the rest of you, when I like something, I plant it. I planted a seed, and five years later there was a great tree. I was very lucky. I called it Fortuna. Little did I know that it rarely works out this easily, as many failed attempts at growing have proven to me since. I was an accidental farmer—now I am president of the Cherimoya Association.”