Fruit Explorers, Guerrilla Grafters, and Other Useful People

The editors here at Chelsea Green are constantly seeking out what’s new and important in the world of sustainable living. As part of an occasional blog series, our editors are sharing what they’ve been reading, researching, or just plain pondering. Below Senior Editor Ben Watson talks about “guerrilla grafters” and why the world could use a lot more of these noble characters.

By Ben Watson (Senior Editor, Chelsea Green Publishing)

Recently a friend sent me an online article about a group of “guerrilla grafters” who were hitting the streets of San Francisco under cover of night and grafting branches and buds of good-tasting tree fruits onto some of the older, non-fruiting trees that are so often neglected in cities throughout the US. Their stated goal sounded noble: to provide “free fruit” in season to some of the city’s poor and homeless. But I suspect that just as important was the universal urge of anyone who propagates new fruit trees, or who grows a victory garden instead of a flower bed or (heaven help us) a big turfgrass lawn. It’s the urge to grow something useful and edible, not merely ornamental.

It made me think of a drive I made to Virginia a few Aprils ago. Passing through a small town near the Delaware Water Gap, I noticed that the main street had been planted with a line of ornamental Bradford pears, that overused, ubiquitous landscape tree. The trees were in full bloom and lovely, yet my first thought was “What a waste! Why aren’t they growing something that actually bears worthwhile fruit!” It was at that moment that I recognized myself as an Outlaw Horticulturist.

Most city officials hate trees that bear edible fruits or nuts. They drop, they mess up the sidewalks and stain nearby buildings. They are, in short, considered a nuisance. I remember two enormous mountain-ash (rowan) trees that used to flank the front of the public library in Concord, New Hampshire, where I grew up. The trees were old but healthy and magnificent. But the tannic little scarlet berries stained the granite façade of the library (or so it was said). So one day, down they came, without much ceremony, and with very little complaint from plant-loving citizens like me. I’m willing to bet that the trees’ shade offered more in the way of summer savings on air-conditioning than they ever cost in terms of annual cleanup. Not to mention their ancient Celtic importance of guarding against witches. But when City Hall doesn’t appreciate either the practical or mythic value of trees, you can’t fight City Hall.

How different then, was my first encounter with the ginkgo trees of New York City. On Cathedral Parkway (aka, 110^th Street), along the northern edge of Central Park, there are wonderful Ginkgo biloba trees with their beautiful butterflied yellow foliage in the fall, and some of the smelliest nuts you’ll ever find. Yet old Chinese women come and collect the stinky nuts every year, taking them home to clean them and crack them open, revealing the delicious kernels within, which are considered a delicacy and one of the indispensible “five jewels” of Chinese cuisine.

What’s more, gingkos are survivors – one of the world’s oldest trees, they even look a bit prehistoric. They also, not so incidentally, are famous for their ability to remove pollutants from the air. The gingko is tough enough to make it anywhere – even in New York. Frank Sinatra should have written a song about them.

With ginkgos, it takes two to tango, so to speak. There are male and female trees, and it requires one of each to produce nuts. A fact that I learned back in college, when someone planted a male gingko on one side of our courtyard, as a companion to the huge female tree on the opposite corner. The smell got so strong one year that some unnamed undergrad cut the male gingko down – someone who was clearly not a plant lover, but who no doubt graduated and went on to a brilliant career as a municipal official.

In my opinion, the world needs more “guerrilla grafters,” as well as other people who work as amateur plant people pro bono public, for the public good. Fruit explorers, for instance, are a slightly obsessive legion of people who seek out, sample, and propagate fruit trees from country roadsides, abandoned fields and farms, and the “waste places” that most of us ignore – like the pear tree growing behind the skating arena or the cider apple behind the box store parking lot.

Related Link: How to Graft the Perfect Fruit Tree

So if you see me somewhere this winter furtively taking cuttings from an abandoned or “wild” tree, please don’t call the police on me, or any of my brethren or sisters. We really are explorers, and the work that we do may result in the pest- and disease-resistant fruit varieties of tomorrow. After all, what is a better sign of organic worthiness than a tree that grows all by itself, with no human intervention, and produces good fruit for cider, or baking, or even eating fresh. We may seem like oddballs, but we are in the proud tradition of oddballs like Henry David Thoreau (Wild Apples).

Not too put too fine a point on it, but the obsessive, unremunerated efforts of passionate and eccentric enthusiasts has always been some of the most useful to humanity. It reminds me of my favorite quote from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), which he writes:

And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

God bless the plant geeks and oddballs.

Lead Photo by Guerilla Grafters
Photo of Ben Watson by Ian Aldrich