[Via livescience.com 2015-08-03]:
“An art project featuring a live tree that bears 40 different kinds of fruit is more than just a conversation piece. The so-called “Tree of 40 Fruit” — blossoming in a variety of pretty pink hues when completed — is rooted in science.
“The eye-catching artistic rendering of the tree brought worldwide attention to its creator, Sam Van Aken, a professor in the school of art at Syracuse University in New York. And although Van Aken’s “Franken-tree” is not common, the processes that hold it together are, according to experts.
“‘[Van Aken has] taken the idea of a single root stock and a single variety and amplified it to express something creative, and that’s the artistic side of it for him,’ said Greg Peck, an assistant professor of horticulture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. [Peck received his PhD in Horticulture at Cornell in 2009 and will be joining the Horticulture Section faculty here this fall.]”
