Fagus sylvatica tortuosa. My two largest dwarf beeches are continuing to grow despite being nibbled on by deer. I need to protect them better. The shapes are unique and beautiful.
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Araucaria araucana. Monkey puzzle. I took the special little seedling and one other normal one of the same height and potted them up and took better pictures. Now the difference is much more noticeable. All the other seedlings have long spiky ordinary leaves like the plant on the left. The leaves of the mutant seedling are much shorter and are growing closer more upward next to the trunk. The effect is that they prick your fingers much less when you touch them and they seem softer. Example of a normal seedling of the same height. The mutated seedling in comparison. It doesn't look like a monkey puzzle anymore. I will try and look after it well. I hope it will be female one day. It seems much easier to just sow its seeds than to collect its pollen and try to cross it then. In any case that won't be until at least 20 years from now.
Feijoa. I planted out all feijoas that i grew from seed. The idea is to find the ones that grow, flower and fruit the best here by mass sowing seeds from different varieties. They are protected by a P17 vlies. For now there is no damage. They are looking good. I planted them very close on purpose. Planting very close is the only real way to make mass sowings and selection possible by using less space and profiting from the accelerated growth.through the "mini big forest" effect. (Miyawaki) Best adapted individuals will show by earlier flowering, vigour and better fruit production.
Avocado. My seedling avocadoes in the polytunnel are undamaged but the two growing outside have suffered quite a lot already. This is a fantastic avocado seedling growing in the tunnel. The leaves have a strong anis smell when crushed. Another seedling, this time from a Del Rio mother tree. The leaves have very little scent unlike most mexican types but it's supposed to be very hardy. Mexicola seedling growing outdoors already well damaged will probably freeze back to the roots like every year. Fantastic seedling growing outdoors well damaged too despite some effort of protection.
Prunus domestica subsp. syriaca. Mirabelle plum. I stratified hundreds of plum pits from a tree with good tasting fruit. I want to try and grow hundreds of seedlings to try and find one that performs better here . Mirabelle plum trees normally don't manage to set fruit where i live. All seeds came from one tree in germany, which might be less good than from a local tree here in brittany, and i don't know how much seedlings can vary genetically. It's an experiment to see if i can find better adapted varieties in mass sowings of mirabelle plum pits of one tree.
Gevuina avellana. Two of my chilean hazelnuts flowered this year. I found only one nut forming on each for now but i am very happy about that already and fruit set will surely improve. They have a great potential because they give tasty nutritional nuts, of which a very good quality oil can be extracted, and have many other useful qualities. They turned out to be one of the few experimental crops that actually grow very well here. If i can get the next generation to grow from seeds it will be the third generation sprouted here in brittany. I believe the more often you reproduce marginal crops from seed while selecting the quicker the plant can adapt. It still has some flowers that didn't freeze when we had frost.
Araucaria araucana. I sowed 50 monkey puzzle nuts and got many seedlings to grow. These all came from nuts i collected last year. One seedling in particular is very different from all the others. Its leaves are much shorter and much less spiky. The leaves of all seedlings are between 15 and 20 mm long , except that one individual with 6 mm long leaves, about one third in length. Otherwise the individual looks healthy and is overall as tall as the other ones. It looks very different to the other seedlings and I wonder if other people have had seedlings like that.