Bramley's Seedling blossom

Your wonderful response to our call for information on blossom dates demonstrates not only that a Blog is an excellent way to collect data but also reveals an enormous range of varieties grown across Britain. We find Victoria plum growing from Kent to Northumberland and collections of dozens of varieties of apple and pears spread across the country - fruit cultivation is thriving in gardens without a doubt! And Spring 2009 was an exceptional year for fruit blossom with April temperatures as high as 21.6C on 15 April, peaking again on 1 May in Kent.

Myrobalans, the first plums to flower, began to come into blossom in the third week of March with the last myrobalan on 30 March in the National Fruit Collections at Brogdale near Faversham, about the same time as Pershore in Worcestershire, which has a very mild climate, while on the Kent coast trees had flowered a week or more earlier. The weather was wonderful and all the plums burst into flower in the first week of April. Kent commercial cherry orchards were in full flower from 14 - 21 April. Meanwhile early pears had rapidly come into flower by 9 April in the Collections, then with a sudden storm and high winds followed by raised temperatures were all over a week later. The first apple recorded in the Collections is Red Astrachan which opened  on 10 April and was in full flower on 13 April. Varieties carried on blossoming until 20 May when the very last Feuille Morte was at full flower.

The flowering dates that we have collected do indeed show that these vary with location: for example Victoria was in full flower on 7- 8 April in Kent, but more than a week later at 16 April in Yorkshire and Bramley’s Seedling on 23-25 of April in Kent and 1 May in York. Walls, of course advance the time of flowering, as Ian Harrison's visits to West Dean Garden in Sussex demonstrated. In Northumberland the wall sheltering a Victoria plum allowed it to blossom the same time as trees much further south.

Thanks to Ian Sturrock we have data for 33 plantings of Bardsey apple; these are scions of the apple that grows on Bardsey Island off the Lleyn Peninsular of North Wales, now distributed far and wide, but illustrating a range of full flower dates from 16 April in Winchester, southern England, to 5 May in Mull of Kintyre, Scotland. These Bardsey dates have been very kindly ‘mapped’ by Fruit Forum’s web-site designer and apple enthusiast, Richard Borrie - click here to view the map, then click on the symbol to see the date and location. We were not, however, able to join up these dates and reveal a neat picture of lines of advancing spring, no doubt due to the individual micro climates for many of these points, ranging from walls, on the one hand, to, on the other, trees growing in high exposed spots. There would also have been a fair amount of error in collecting the dates - one person’s full flower (80-90% flowers open) is another persons 50% of flowers open! Nevertheless this was an interesting exercise and the important point that the relative positions of the varieties with respect to each other remains constant wherever they are grown is amply demonstrated by our data.

Thus, for example, Denniston’s Superb flowers in advance of Victoria in Sussex as it does in Kent; Conference before Doyenné du Comice in Yorkshire, Oxford and Kent and Cox’s Orange Pippin slightly before Bramley’s Seedling, although this year the warm April weather brought them together. These relative positions are the basis of ensuring good pollination of fruit trees. Varieties are rarely self fertile and all varieties crop better if pollinated by another variety, that is one that flowers at approximately the same time. The actual dates of flowering will vary from year to year, but the relative position remains the same. In publications, these positions are usually based on an average of 10 years of flowering records. For example, in the 1960s - 1970s, Cox’s Orange Pippin’s average flowering date was 12 May, while this year its full flower date was advanced to 23 April, but as in the 1960s-1970s it still flowered later than Egremont Russet - 8 May then and 19 April in 2009.

This is illustrated by plots of the flowering dates for 2009 in the National Fruit Collections and that for 2008 for the same varieties, which in the cooler spring has pulled the dates further apart. (Click on dates to view plots). Apart from the anomaly of St Edmund’s Pippin and Worcester Pearmain, which would be ironed out over a ten year period - the relative positions are the same. But, as one can see, when comparing flowering dates it is important to know when data was collected and relate these to a standard. (On these plots the green area indicates the flowering period for each variety from first open flowers to petal fall, with the red section the full flower date).

Thank you all so much for contributing and we look forward to hearing from you again on how your trees have progressed. Cherries are being picked and a bumper crop is in sight for all tree fruits in Kent.

Joan Morgan