To All,
North American Fruit Explorer's Southern Fruit Fellowship
(This paragraph is drawn from Lee Reich, Landscaping with Fruit: Strawberry ground covers, blueberry hedges, grape arbors, and 39 other luscious fruits to make your yard an edible paradise, Storey Publishing, 2009. The first sentence in this section is from p. 100, and the quotation is from p. 101. I had access to these page at this site. Amazon provides a different selection of pages.) Consider upgrading your yard by using the Nanking cherry as a highly decorative and productive hedge that provides beauty in three seasons.
I googled "Fruit Explorer" to see what other fruit explorers are out there and got 16.4 million hits. Below are the highlights that I gleaned from the first twelve pages. (I am somewhere in those 16.4 million hits, though I do not appear on the first twelve pages. I can confidently say that I appear somewhere because I googled "The Fruit Explorer Tips His Hat to Chiquita Banana" and got 21,800 hits, with the very first one being my blog post of that name.)
Weird Fruit Explorer
In the e-mail of 15 Sep 2014 I reported that I had discovered a YouTube personality called the Weird Fruit Explorer. At that time, he had made 56 videos; currently, he is up to 103. Here is his description of his mission.
My name is Jared Rydelek. For a living I am a contortionist, fire eater and sword swallower; naturally, it gets boring. So I have taken up the hobby of traveling the world to try and find weird things to do and eat. On my channel I will be posting videos reviewing exotic fruit and the weirdest places I can find.
Why fruit? Finding exotic fruit that is unavailable to the rest of the world is a bit like a treasure hunt. Finding something I never knew existed is a thrilling experience whether or not the fruit actually tastes good. Some of the fruits I find are tasty, some are disgusting, some are dangerous to eat, but all of them are interesting.
Why strange places? Well, the world is full of amazing sites that few people, even travelers, get to see. The biggest reason is my own desire of wanting to have my mind blown by new and interesting things in the world. But I also hope that these videos will encourage people to go on adventures and see more of this great world.
I have only watched a small portion of one of his videos since I did not want to be influenced by his approach or content. From that tiny peek, however, it looks like what he does is very different from what I do. In particular, I looked at the list of fruits that he has covered, and they are mainly fruits that are not available to me in Boston grocery stores but that are available to him as he travels the world.
Take a look at his YouTube home page if you want to check out the competition. This is just for your information; I give no positive or negative recommendation. Please do not tell me anything about him or his videos.
Amazing Fruit Explorer
You can purchase a game for your iPhone called the Amazing Fruit Explorer. Here is a description and pictures.
Travel along with the Magic Fruits to Five different Worlds: Fruits, Diamond, Bubble, Gem and Birds, to explore different wonders and secrets of each world. Along the way you can experience one of the most addictive game play ever created. Once you start the journey you can't stop until you explore all the places in the maps.
Dora the Fruit Explorer
The cartoon character Dora the Explorer, though a broad gauge explorer, does do some fruit exploration to guide younger eaters through the jungle of fruit and teach them to eat processed fruit snacks instead of the real thing.
360 Degree Fruit Explorer
On this site you can rotate the picture of a fruit through 360 degrees so you can see what it looks like from any angle. This site also tells you how to eat the fruit and what it tastes like as well as fun facts about each fruit. In addition, this site has episodes of the series, "The Fruit Hunters." This series is produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and narrated by the Indiana Jones of fruit. In the picture below of the Indiana Jones of fruit, how many of the fruits can you identify? I can only spot jackfruit, dragon fruit, and star fruit (and plantains?). I think we need the Weird Fruit Explorer to identify more.
North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX)
This organization describes itself in the following way.
The North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) is a network of individuals throughout the United States and Canada devoted to the discovery, cultivation and appreciation of superior varieties of fruits and nuts.
Founded in 1967 by a small group of pomological hobbyists, NAFEX has grown to an organization of more than 3,000 members, and is chartered as a nonprofit organization in the state of Illinois. Although the ranks of our membership include professional pomologists, nurserymen, and commercial orchardists, NAFEX members are all AMATEURS in the truest sense of the word; they are motivated by their LOVE of fine fruit. NAFEX members typically work together to help each other by sharing ideas, information, experiences, and propagating material.
This organization goes on to describe its mission as: "To aid and encourage fruit exploration in its broadest context." For general information, see this site. You might want to attend the annual meeting.
On 5-6 Oct 2015 the North American Fruit Explorer's Southern Fruit Fellowship will meet in conjunction with the Texas Fruit Conference in College Station, TX. Fruit tree grafting will be a focus of these meetings. Don't miss out on the good fellowship. To keep out the riffraff, registration is $80. (For those of you who are not Southern Baptists, I should explain that "fellowship" means that you get together with others and have a good time in an informal setting, e.g., at a church supper.)
The San Diego chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association chose as the theme of its 2015 annual meeting the possibility of growing healthy and delicious fruit in a time of drought. As their website states, "The main event will be on Saturday August 8, 2015 and will kick off with fruit explorer Joe Simcox in a keynote session on 'Uncommon fruit from dry regions of the world'."
PDX Fruit Explorers
This company in Oregon City, OR, allows you to sign up for a box of fruit every week from July 20 to November 21. The customer gets to explore the mystery box of fruit that arrives every week. One of the commercial endeavors of this company is to sell ugly but perfectly healthy fruit; see below. Perhaps Dave and Gwenie can check this out and report back to us. (Mike Breen contributes this story and video about how the French embrace ugly ("inglorious" they call it) fruit.)
The Great Fruit Adventure
Max MacGillivray bills himself as the Founder and Fruit Explorer at the Great Fruit Adventure. He apparently is a muckraker and activist concerned with fruit-related issues.
Joe Simcox, Fruit Explorer
Also, the 25th Annual Hawai'i International Tropical Fruit Conference to be held on 25-27 Sep 2015 will cover a wide range of fruits, including jackfruit. It advertises, "Other speakers and their topics include 'The Fruit Explorer' Joseph Simcox, who travels the globe searching, tasting and documenting thousands of edibles." I am starting to see that Mr. Simcox and I are going to have to fight it out for the title of "Fruit Explorer."
Grants for Fruit Explorers
The Helen and Paul Thomson Endowment gives grants to "...cutting edge fruit explorers who travel the world looking for different varieties of plants to introduce." Joe Simcox (see previous section) has received one of these grants, so it is possible to make a living from fruit exploring.
USDA Hires Fruit Explorers
Another way to make a living as a fruit explorer is to get hired by the USDA to go looking for plants like the Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa), which bears on a single bush a crop of 15-25 pounds of small cherries about 1/4 of an inch in diameter; see the pictures below of a flowering bush and a close-up of a flower cluster. The activity of one fruit explorer is mentioned in the following quotation.
Visiting Manchuria in 1924, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fruit explorer Dr. George M. Darrow wrote that "in the rougher portions of Manchuria [the Nanking cherry] occurs only on hillsides where the bushes are usually three or four feet high and, in the early summer, are red from the abundance of fruit." [Interpolated material in original.]
If you are looking for a career change, consider getting hired as a USDA fruit explorer so you can scour the globe looking for the next Nanking cherry.
Chris Rollins, Fruit Explorer
John Bunker, Fruit Explorer
From the Bangor Daily News, 6 Oct 2014, we find:
On Tuesday, October 7 at 6:30pm in the Belfast Free Library, apple expert and "fruit explorer" John Bunker will give a free presentation titled "In search of the oldest apples in Maine. What they teach us about the past, present and future." Bunker's presentation will cover the history of apples in Maine. He will describe his adventures tracking down, identifying and preserving rare historic varieties in Waldo County and elsewhere. Attendees who have their own apple trees are encouraged to bring fruit for identification.
Chris Rollins, Fruit Explorer
In the two-part article, "On to Borneo," that appeared in June and July 1994 issues of Tropical Fruit News, Chris Rollins, who is explicitly identified as a fruit explorer, points out one of the drawbacks of this pursuit: "Unfortunately, when you find fruits in the forest, it's pretty discouraging. There will be a 60-foot tree, and the first limb is 40 feet up." He also says that as he travels between the local markets in Borneo, the available fruits frequently change, thus indicating the riot of diversity in this tropical island..
Travel Tip
Travel Tip
You doubtless are on fire to attend one of the fruit explorer meetings described above, maybe that of the North American Fruit Explorers, the North American Fruit Explorer's Southern Fruit Fellowship, the California Rare Fruit Growers Association, or the Hawai'i International Tropical Fruit Conference. It will be hard to choose from the galaxy of opportunities. You have missed this year's meetings, so you will need to watch for the dates and programs for next year so you can pick the most interesting. Think how you will enlarge your knowledge of fruit and of the fascinating fruit people you will meet. Luxuriate in the midst of a sea of fruit enthusiasts. No more doubts over what type of vacation to take next year. Below is a picture of the location of the 2015 meeting of the North American Fruit Explorers.
Rick
