78 Lucky Peach BRIDGET HUBER

ILLUSTRATIONS BY mATT PANUSKA

The PLAnt KingDoM 79 the shoots with long-handled n a fall day in 1970, Amigo Bob pruners and uses the blades Cantisano was barreling down like chopsticks to hand me each one. The sticks are cool an old dirt road in California’s and smell fresh, apple-ish, with a skin of silvery bark and Sierra Nevada Mountains when a razor-thin layer of char- the dark woods abruptly opened treuse tissue, called cambium, beneath. The tree is a Bart- into a clearing. There stood a lett-type pear, which is com- ramshackle orchard that was long abandoned mon, but this tree has survived O 150 years of droughts, floods, but loaded with ripe pears and apples. Year after and pests. One pest in particular has year for most of the next forty-four falls, Amigo been especially devastating to returned to pick fruit without intervention, the pear trees in recent years: fire blight, a bacteria that enters bears his only competition. “This outrageous fruit trees through their flowers and can spread all the way to was growing by itself in a gorgeous spot,” says the roots, leaving them black Amigo, who got his nickname from a high-school and shriveled as if they’ve been burned. In 2013, Frog Hollow girlfriend. “I didn’t have a clue why.” Farm, an organic fruit farm in Brentwood, lost almost seven hundred trees and was left Eventually, he pieced salt-and-pepper dreadlocks that hang like jungle with a “pear graveyard.” If all it together: the trees were vines, the longest grazing the back of his knees. He’s goes well, in a little over a year, planted around 150 years ago an autodidact who makes his living by helping com- the farm may plant seedlings by a gold miner named L.F.K. panies like Fetzer Vineyards, Sunkist, and Del Monte propagated from the cuttings Buck, and tended by his four grow organic. When I meet him, Amigo is wearing we’re taking today, in the hope lifelong-bachelor sons who a kaleidoscopic tie-dye shirt and a white felted hat that whatever special resist- sold produce to workers at the the shape of a toadstool cap. ance this tree seems to have Orleans Flat gold mine. There In Amigo’s Subaru (license plate: WNA BFRE), we developed will protect Frog are places like it all across Gold head to Goodyears Bar, a once-thriving mining town Hollow’s orchards, too. Locat- Country: ghost towns, for- founded on a flat that straddles the Yuba River where, ing and spreading resistant gotten stagecoach stops, and it was said, men could sift $2,000 worth of gold from varieties is especially pressing faded boomtowns full of feral a single wheelbarrow of dirt. Back in the 1800s, there since organic growers lost their fruit trees, planted in a wave of were bakeries, saloons, a school, and more than six best weapon against the blight gilded optimism and abandoned hundred residents; now there are only sixty-eight. in 2014—an antibiotic spray when gold fever broke. On a sunny slope, where just a couple houses and a unpopular with both environ- Amigo is one of the pio- camper are left, rusty reminders of the mining days mentalists and consumers. neers of organic agriculture are piled in great drifts everywhere—an old cart, “Fucking environmentalists,” in California. He’s been farm- piles of spikes, lengths of chain. A series of crooked growls Amigo. “We don’t have ing for over forty years, and in paddocks holds stocky animals—a furry snub-nosed anything else to kill it.” 1973 he cofounded California steer, bearded goats, and a pair of mini-donkeys. Amigo is a seventh- Certified Organic Farmers, one We cross the goat pen and find ourselves in generation Californian, a San of the first organic certification front of a raggedy pear tree with a big open- Francisco native who went programs in the U.S. He helped ing in its trunk. It’s perforated with woodpecker back to the land when the city write the first law legally defin- holes and patchy with yellow lichen. But at the clogged with flower children. ing organic practices in Cali- top, above some dead-looking limbs, is a bris- He’s collected and sold ladybugs, fornia, passed in 1979. He has tling crown of new, skinny branches. “This is a run an olive oil company, and snowy, bushy sideburns and very special tree,” Amigo says. He clips of some of even spent a few days working

80 Lucky Peach for a circus. He met his fiancée, f you bury an apple or pear Of alien trees and apples Jenifer Bliss, eleven years ago; seed, chances are what sprouts up not her own. she was his grandson’s Head will look nothing like its parent. But getting the “batten- Start teacher. These days, Bliss Instead, you’ll get a wildling—often a weird ing bastard” to take requires and Amigo, along with a young fruit with a taste that could, in Henry David some manipulation of time and farmer named Adam Nuber, Thoreau’s words, “set a squirrel’s teeth on space. You cut the scion before operate under the auspices edge and make a jay scream.” Fruits like the tree’s buds start to break, of the Felix Gillet Institute, a Iapples don’t breed true, because they are what are but you can’t graft it onto the nonprofit dedicated to finding known as heterozygotes—their genetics include stock until the stock has bro- and saving heirloom peren- variations that recombine unpredictably. (Which ken its dormancy weeks later. nial food plants in the Sierra means even the Red Delicious, that dullest of apples, So you hold the scion in a state Nevada foothills. It’s named carries chaos inside.) If you’re a commercial fruit of suspended animation—in after a French barber turned grower, you really want a clone—what’s called a this case, a fridge—until the nurseryman who introduced named variety. To get what you want—a Bosc pear stock starts to draw moisture hundreds of fruit and nut vari- or a Bing cherry—you have to graft it. In the win- from the ground and send sug- eties to California starting in ter or early spring, while the trees are dormant, you ars through its trunk. Then, the late 1800s. The trio prowls take a cutting of the youngest growth of the variety you make a cut in the stock and Gold Country’s byways, looking you want: that’s the scion. Then in the spring, when insert the scion, taking care to for old trees along back roads sap is flowing and bark is easy to move, you insert line up the cambium on both and abandoned homesteads, it into the tissue of an already-established tree, pieces. If the species are similar some of which they propagate the stock. The scion and the stock will fuse and the enough, and the graft doesn’t and sell. So far, they’ve found scion branches will produce the kind of fruit you’re dry out, the cells will recognize more than three thousand old after. Grafting is both miraculous and mundane. one another and knit together fruit and nut trees, roses, and Every Pink Lady apple or Bartlett pear is the result to become one. berries, and have a list of more of grafting, but at the same time, it’s witchy and A history of grafting pub- than six hundred sites, many of astonishing that parts of two separate plants can lished in Horticultural Reviews which they haven’t had time to become a single organism. in 2009 dates the practice back visit yet. Here’s how Virgil described grafting in The to the first millennium BCE. Bliss cuts the sticks into Georgics: Humans have always projected neat lengths and binds them We make a deep incision in the tree, our desires, neuroses, and story together. She labels them and And in the solid wood the slip inclose. lines onto trees (the fruit of the puts them in a tote bag. At the The battening bastard shoots again and grows. tree of knowledge, the family end of the day, they’ll go into And, in short space, the laden boughs arise tree, a scion of a wealthy fam- the fridge until the sap starts With happy fruit aspiring to the skies. ily), and the ancients had some to run and it’s time to graft. The mother plant admires the leaves unknown entertaining ideas about how

The PLAnt KingDoM 81 grafting worked. The medie- he stepped of the boat from France wearing a silk of these foods grow in Amer- val philosopher Maimonides top hat. He eventually moved west, to Nevada City, ica), Amigo explains, chances explained, “When one species California, and opened a barbershop. are it descends—at least in is grafted upon another, the Nevada County was the heart of California Gold part—from trees brought or branch which is to be grafted Country. When Gillet arrived, the rush of pros- bred by Gillet. “There were lots must be in the hand of a beau- pectors had slowed, and mining operations had of people, but he had the most tiful damsel, whilst a male consolidated—run by big companies that used stuf that stuck. He had the person has disgraceful and high-pressure jets of water to break up rock for- most varieties that turned out unnatural sexual intercourse mations and get at the gold. The practice, called to be the bomb varieties or the with her.” hydraulic mining, was as productive as it was parent of the bomb varieties,” Johnny Appleseed, just two destructive: the mines sent so much silt into the Amigo says. Of the hundreds generations older than Gil- rivers that they flooded entire low-lying towns of varieties Burbank bred (or let, is said to have considered and farmlands. Some of that silt is still in the San took credit for breeding, as grafting to be cruel. He planted Francisco Bay today. The destructiveness of the some accounts say), only a few his orchards from seed. His method would eventually lead to mining’s demise are still in use—the russet were semi-wild orchards, like in the early 1900s. There are gold deposits in Burbank potato, Shasta daisy, most in the U.S. at the time. Nevada County that remain untouched. and Santa Rosa plum. The resultant fruits were “Most came to rape the land. They came to In the last several years, unpredictable, but it didn’t extract,” says Amigo. “But some came to plant.” Amigo, Bliss, and Nuber have matter. They were mainly Gillet, it seems, came to do a little of both. He filed found some amazing things destined for booze—cider, a handful of mining claims (though it’s unclear by driving back roads, visiting brandy, and perry—and for exactly what became of them) and, within a few old homesteads, and following animal fodder. Grafting was years, sent for $3,000 worth of fruit and nut trees tips from neighbors: an apple reserved for the fruit gardens from France. He bought a denuded piece of land that looks like a strawberry of the rich, which were largely not far from the town center and broke ground and tastes like a raspberry. ornamental symbols of status there, calling it Barren Hill Nursery. In an 1885 Plums that look like apri- and sophistication. newspaper ad he touted his Proeparturien walnut, cots and others that look like By the time Appleseed the violet nectarine, and the Diaphane Green Gage pears. A green-fleshed peach. reached middle age, in the mid- plum, along with 57 varieties of English gooseber- Pink mulberries. Tiny orange 1820s, grafting had caught on ries and 165 varieties of grapes. apples. A plum that you pick in in America and we’d entered Gillet was part of a cadre that UC Davis plant the fall and doesn’t ripen until the golden age of pomology, breeder Tom Gradziel calls “cowboy nurserymen.” Easter. And several apples that a period of intense interest in They came from all over the world and capitalized don’t turn brown when cut. But fruit varieties that lasted most on the West’s climate and the influx of people look- they still haven’t located most of the nineteenth century. That ing, quite literally, to put down roots. Henderson of what is listed in Gillet’s old time, writes Susan Dolan in Lewelling put an entire nursery of seedlings onto a catalogs. Amigo’s white whale her book Fruitful Legacy, was covered wagon and brought it west on the Oregon is a walnut that, according to “a period of excess in fashion, Trail. A couple decades later, Luther Burbank began Gillet’s catalog, grows in giant discourse, breeding, fasci- breeding plants in Santa Rosa and earned the nick- clusters “like so many bunches nation, and mysticism.” Doz- name “the Plant Wizard.” of bananas.” ens and dozens of fruit vari- Over a hundred years after Gillet came to Gillet ended up a prominent eties were grown during this Nevada City, Amigo started an organic farm- but not necessarily likable period—Green Gage plums, supply business there, called Peaceful Valley Farm person. He was a local leader the ribbed Calville Rouge apple, Supply. One day, a customer mentioned there in a political party whose main Rambo apples, a medlar called had once been a nursery in town. Amigo went to platform was to exclude the the Monstrueuse d’Evreinof, knock on the door of Gillet’s former house, and the Chinese from citizenship— sorbus. Such a panoply of fruits owners let him go through a box of Gillet’s papers ironic, coming from an and vegetables has never grown that had been left behind. Amigo realized many immigrant who was making his in our country before or since. of the trees he was selling were the same ones in own fortune using techniques Felix Gillet arrived in Gillet’s old catalogs. the Chinese mastered millennia America some time in the When you eat a walnut, a strawberry, hazelnut, prior. He was also a member 1850s. No Johnny Appleseed, or chestnut grown on the West Coast (where most of the city council that

82 Lucky Peach passed a resolution ordering all Chinese people to leave Nevada City within sixty days. (Amigo: “I’m not saying he was a sweetheart.”) By the time Gillet died in 1908, orcharding was becom- ing less freewheeling, more consolidated, and profession- alized. And the number of dif- ferent varieties of edible crops grown in the U.S. was already beginning to dwindle: there were an estimated 14,000 named varieties of apple grown in the U.S. in the nineteenth century. Apple diversity hit its nadir in 1980, Dolan writes, “when almost one in every two apples commercially produced in the United States was a Red Delicious. Since then, more varieties have been intro- duced, but they aren’t typi- cally revivals of old varieties, but new ones that are pat- ented or even trademarked like the SweeTango and the Opal.” Thousands of fruit varieties have gone extinct since the 1900s, Dolan says. The orchards of today look quite diferent from the relics Amigo explores. The apples and cherries in commercial here’s something haunting about to the horror of their children, orchards are “frail by design,” the work that the Felix Gillet took a chainsaw to the yard and Dolan tells me, planted on Institute does. While Amigo and Bliss cut down the mother tree. dwarf rootstock and severely collect scions, ghosts of the people who On the way home from Bliss pruned so they produce young had once cared for the trees flicker on and Amigo’s house, I stop to and are easier to pick. An the periphery. There’s Sy, an old man who see the nursery where Nuber old-fashioned apple tree can Tpointed out an apple he only knew as “Minthy Ann,” is at work. Blond-bearded and live for two centuries, but the after the neighbor who’d loved them best and sug- baby-faced, Nuber points out ones that proliferate today gested you might be able to get a barren fruit tree the site of the future “mother may only live about ten to fif- to start bearing again by beating it with a chain. We orchard” where they’ll plant the teen years. Cherry orchards drove by an old farmhouse together with a wal- best of the trees they’ve found. are now looking more like nut tree with widespread branches. The sisters who Right now, it’s just a hillock vineyards—pruned to a single live there, now old ladies, used to sell those walnuts covered in manzanita. But this spindle and trained over low for their pocket money. There’s the Donna de Lyon year, they’re going to start trellises. If these orchards are chestnut: a family in Camptonville had two huge building a terraced orchard abandoned, it’s unlikely they’ll chestnuts on their property and always thought that, along with another block leave any trace for a future of one as the mother and the other as the father. on the land, will hold 400 to fruit explorer to find. When the mother of the family died, her husband, 450 trees—two of each kind.

The PLAnt KingDoM 83 They’ll plant a Noah’s Ark of the Amigo and Bliss found the tree growing near an old felt setting their sights on most superlative ones they’ve hydraulic mine that was the site of the first tele- California for the first time. found—the best-tasting, rar- phone line. The federal collection also lacks the I ask Gradziel about that est, hardiest ones. For now, Chaubert walnut and the Grosse Marseilles fig with Bartlett tree Amigo and I cut the priority is conserving the “strawberry flesh” that they found at an old home- scions from in Goodyears Bar. trees they’ve found before they stead. And there are unknowns that the Felix Gillet He tells me that even though die—they lose a couple every Institute hasn’t been able to identify, like a jet- there’s no shortage of Bartlett season. But Amigo dreams of black cherry they found growing through a deck in genetics (it’s the most widely someday breeding new varie- Downieville. The U.S.’s main Prunus collection— grown pear in the U.S.), Amigo ties from the old. which includes plums, cherries, peaches, apricots, may well be right that that As climate change and and almonds—only has samples from eighty-six of tree is something special. “If its accompanying scourges the several hundred known members of the species. you’ve got a Bartlett-type pear threaten to upend everything But some of what the Felix Gillet Institute has that’s still alive after one hun- about where and how we found is already in the USDA collections, including dred years of fire blight, there’s grow our food, the impulse to six of Gillet’s hazelnuts, the Doyenne Gris pear, and something interesting there,” stockpile diversity becomes various Bartletts. It made me wonder if the Felix he says. “It’s gone through the more of a necessity. Gillet Institute’s work, for all its romance, was basi- crucible of natural selection.” “Genetic diversity is like a cally just serving the quixotic fancies of Amigo and You can’t be blinded by savings account,” Charlie Brum- his team. Is it worth the trouble to save these old genetics, Gradziel tells me. mer, the director of UC Davis’s trees, especially since some of them, while unpopu- Even in an orchard of clones, Center for Plant Breeding and lar, aren’t endangered? there are mutants, like the Red the Plant Sciences department, Looking for a dose of scientific skepticism, I Delicious apple, thought to be a tells me. Saving varieties that go to the USDA clonal germplasm collection near divergent Yellow Bellflower, or aren’t commercially viable, or Winters, California, to meet Gradziel. After a drive the one tree that withstands an even all that tasty, is an impor- flanked by towering antique olive trees, I find him epidemic. Epigenetic factors— tant hedge against whatever the in his Jeep, which has a paddleboard strapped to the nongenetic changes that future may hold. Researchers the top and a jumble of hockey gear in the back. His afect the way genes express are even rushing to collect the sheepdog sits shotgun. themselves and can be passed wild relatives of food crops— As we talk, we wander through the orchards. down to subsequent gener- many of which are inedible or There’s a block of pomegranates imported from ations—are subtle and are even poisonous—to try to con- Kazakhstan right before the Berlin Wall fell—some still not that well understood. serve some of their genes, in with black, desiccated fruit still on the branches. But Gradziel thinks they’ll be case we need them. Some of the varieties bear light-pink fruit, while important to breeders once But saving fruit and nut others are practically seedless. Gradziel points they have the tools to actually trees and grape vines isn’t as out a pale-pink rat-tailed mulberry that tastes use them. The key for now is to simple as saving seeds. You can’t just like Chianti, he swears. Later, he leads me conserve that potential, even squirrel them away in a vault— to a citrus grove where we pick out a couple of if we don’t understand it. “Part they have to be kept alive and pomelos for me to take home. He tells me to select of this is science,” Gradziel says. growing or we lose their genetic the orangest ones that have a little give to them. “But a lot of this is art.” material. Plant breeders call this As I heft the fruit, breathing in their floral scent, I It was that eye for potential clonal germplasm. The USDA tell him that I feel a pang of guilt, thinking of my that made Gillet and others has clonal germplasm reposi- family in Maine, still digging out from a blizzard. like him great, Gradziel says. tories in diferent parts of the He perks up—it turns out that he’s a fellow New They didn’t know genetics, but country depending on their cli- Englander. A little giddy, he takes me to a kumquat they knew how to make use mate. Together, the country’s tree loaded with ovoid fruits that look radiant, as of that promise, bringing a seed stockpiles and clonal ger- though lit from within. I crush the fruit between strange variety to a new land, mplasm collections form sort of my molars and the peel’s dull sweetness gives way adding a link to the chain. And a botanical Library of Congress. to a gush of sour liquid. My lips go a bit numb it strikes me that Amigo, who But there are gaps in the in a not-unpleasant way. And as we stand there, sees possibility in forsaken library: a cherry called Guigne grinning, two New Englanders stufng our pockets orchards and in haggard trees, Marbree that Gillet intro- with the golden fruit in January, I get a glimmer of is something of a cowboy duced in 1880, for example. what those first cowboy nurserymen might have nurseryman himself.

84 Lucky Peach