Fruit Formation

Weather: After another too hot Monday, rains started on Tuesday and continued through Saturday night.

Last useful rain: 5/11. Week’s low: 37 degrees F. Week’s high: 83 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Austrian Copper and Persian yellow roses, spirea, snowball, broad leaf yucca, Dutch iris, blue flax, snow-in-summer, purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, hoary cress, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, western stickseed, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, rice, three awn, brome, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Wood rose, skunk bush, tulips, daffodils, lilies of the valley, grape hyacinths peaked, chives, Bath pinks, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansy that wintered over; globe willow dropping catkins that have tiny white flowers.

Bedding Plants: Sweet alyssum, wax begonia, nicotiana

What’s reviving/coming up: Desert willow, trees of heaven, roses of Sharon, buffalo gourd, showy milkweed

Tasks: Men have been working in the market gardens.

I took advantage of the rainy, cool weather to plant some shrubs, oriental poppies, bedding plants, and seeds that like cold weather. Because such weather is so rare, I worked much longer than usual. When I finished, I changed into warm, dry clothes, and thought about men like George Washington and William Henry Harrison who were supposed to have died after they got chilled. Since I assume they had warm, dry clothes or blankets, I presume the problem for them was the lack of enough heat from fireplaces to warm the air in their houses. Only snobs sniff at having a furnace that ignites automatically, a supplemental electric space heater, and an electric blanket.

Animal sightings: Neighbor’s cat, chickadees, hummingbird, cabbage butterflies, small ants, earthworms

Weekly update: The mechanics of fruit production are one of those things I’ve known from books, but never seen in operation. Frosts kill the blossoms nearly every year. When fruit did form, it was high or in protected areas where I never saw the fruit until it was ripening.

This year the cold only affected the apricots. Other members of the rose family were beginning their fruit formation this week.

When the petals dry, they leave the ovaries and attached styles.

The ovaries begin to swell within their protective coverings.

Soon, the ovary takes on the form of the final fruit. The protective covering falls away.

The last thing to disappear is the style that had acted as the tube that guided the pollen into the ovary.

Over the next few weeks, the fruits will expand in size, and the peaches will become round. As they get larger, they also will become heavier, and limbs will begin to bend. Then, even before they are ripe, I may have to remove unripe fruit, especially from the peach, to protect the trees from the consequences of their fertility.

Notes on photographs: All taken in my yard on 11 May 2019.
1. One-seeded juniper (Juniperus monosperma).
2. Siberia pea pod (Caragana arborescens) with remains of its style.
3. Sweet cherry (Prunus avium) with remains of flowers
4. Crab apple ovary (Malus sylvestris) expanding in its protective covering.
5. Sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) emerging from its protective covering.
6. Peaches (Prunus persica) with and without the remains of their styles.

End notes: The female part of the flower is the pistil. It is composed of the ovary at the base, the stigma at the tip, and the style that connects the two.