The leaf-curl resistant Nanaimo Peach

Does anyone in this group know the story behind the leaf-curl resistant Nanaimo Peach that is now in the USA and not in Nanaimo? I can find no leads to its history and plan to bring them back to Canada.

A friend in Washington just bought one from One Green World but apparently they are not available in Canada for some reason. I see they are both Trademarked and have a copyright but if they are resistant to leaf-curl they should probably be propagated here in the Canadian PNW...

 

Any clues in this old thread?
Peaches on Vancouver island

I read the blog of the man growing Nanaimo Peach on Vashon Island WA State — again it’s that one green world nursery in Oregon

Have you called Dinters just south of Duncan BC?

What about the research station in Saanich - is it still there? Maybe they have info

Maybe the Ag Canada research stn in Summerland BC has info

 

https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/peach-tree-sutable-for-the-west-coast.23959/


Nanaimo peach

 

Thanks for a couple good leads. Yes, I talked to Bernie last week and all he knows is that it is now patented and unavailable in Canada. I talked to Bob Duncan and I also talked to the owner of Tallclover farms who was about to prune his tree and was going to send me the scions but when he checked with Customs the phytosanitation restrictions prevent it from coming home. He says he will send me pits in August and mentioned they do grow true.
Hadn't heard of the Saanich station and I'll snoop around the Summerland office too. Besides yearning for a LCR peach to grow and propagate I am trying to unravel the history behind this plant and hope to write an article about it. Update: I tried calling the Saanich ag dept but could not locate any site information. I also called Summerland but one just gets a recording so they are both dead ends. I suppose calling One Green World might be a good place to start...

 

Is there a way to figure out what person / company patented it?

Maybe the Nanaimo BC museum archives had some info

Then again - I am assuming that because it’s called “Nanaimo” that it is from Nanaimo BC

Maybe someone had a sentimentality toward Nanaimo ... a fascinating puzzle indeed!

 

$80-million research facility to rise at Plant Health Centre in North Saanich

It appears that this is the current incarnation of the old research stn — did it get rebuilt ? I don’t know


However - it mentions tree fruit in the article - maybe someone knows something
————
Unfortunately anyone I used to know at Summerland BC research stn is long gone ...

Maybe someone at OSU in Corvallis OR has insight (OSU being the ag school)

 

More info found by googling around - in the latter decades before 2000 ... there appears to be a Dr Hugh Daubney who was born Nanaimo 1931

He was a research scientist at Agassiz BC research stn ... it is still there

Anyway - it seems he “invented” a strawberry named “Nanaimo” while at the research station circa 1993

So I wonder if he also came up w the mystery peach

There is lots of info about the Nanaimo strawberry in academic and USDA libraries it seems — so maybe you’ll find the mystery peach too

Hère are just few of references for the strawberry and Agassiz

Publication : USDA ARS

https://specialcollections.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/collectionsguide/darrow/Darrow_TheStrawberry.pdf

Agassiz Research and Development Centre - Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)

Information archivée dans le Web | Information Archived on the Web

https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/1718/PDF/2000/Hokanson.pdf

 

Good sleuthing and a fair assumption on the name. I'll dig into these links later when I am done soilsmithing. Interesting about the strawberry as this is going to be the year of the Strawberry in our gardens. Last year we dabbled with several varieties and this year my lineup is, in order of preference, Charlotte from France, Framberry from the UK, British Sovereign, that we have been growing since the 60's, Pineberry, Aloha Berry, Albion although it is not very sweet or tasty, and if those pesky seeds would ever sprout I would have black and yellow strawbs from Austria...

 

What a selection!

You’ll enjoy a chart in one of those reports — it shows which were the favoured varieties back a couple of decades ago in BC /WA /OR

I did not realize “totem” is a BC invention

PS — I have seen the Dr Nanaimo Scientist name spelled a couple of diff ways online so look for both
Daubney
Daubeny

 

This is the chart I speak of re diff strawberries grown for commercial crops a few decades ago in Cascadia / PacNW

(See jpg x 1 attached)

It is in this USDA pdf somewhere around Page 11 or 13
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/1718/PDF/2000/Hokanson.pdf

 

One other thought - and it is in one of the Strawberry papers - is that while the “invention” might have a legal name ... it may also have a marketing name (patent vs trademark?)

I can’t think of an example specifically ... not being in that industry ... however here is a short article fr USA w USA example for general (non academic) audience

What's in a plant name? Trademark vs. patent

So - while you are seeking a peach called Nanaimo ... maybe it has a different legal name (or vice versa?) ... figuring out that detail might open some of the clues

I notice in the strawberry chart (prev post) there is a popular one called Rainier. Ok, that stands to reason being in WA state ... now in Okanagan BC we know a sweet cherry named Rainier (i imagine it is in WA State too) ... so does each of those fruits have a diff legal name? (Then Latin name I assume) otherwise there’d be two Rainier fruits of diff species.

Also - the article describes USA law, and I do not have any idea how long plant patents last in Canada .

I hope you post any further info you find about the mystery peach .

 

I was acquainted with Dr. Hugh Daubeny for a few years in the early 2000s when he bought some of my BC native plants to sell at the UBC Shop in the Garden. What a very fine man he was! Completely unpretentious. In Memoriam: Hugh Daubeny | Faculty of Land and Food Systems

I hadn't realized that he was responsible for "developing raspberry and strawberry cultivars; most notable are the Totem Strawberry and the Tulameen Raspberry, which have become the international standard for berry quality."

 

A friend of mine here on Vancouver Island who once grew acres of u-pick strawberries in a very fertile area south of Nanaimo still swears by a strawberry called 'Sumas'.

When I went to find more about it online, I immediately came across this article about it by H.A. Daubeny but access to the full text is 'not available'.

'Sumas' strawberry

'Sumas' strawberry [1987]
Daubeny, H.A.;

 

I don't believe I ever heard Hugh talk about dabbling with tree fruit.

It was surreal visiting a popular high-end grocer in London in 2003 and purchasing greenhouse-grown 'Tulameen' from Spain that had been bred by someone I knew.

Another fun fact--there are two strawberries used in a high-end ice cream brand's strawberry ice cream. One of these was developed by Hugh.

 

Thanks for this lead, Daniel. Curious what two varieties of strawberry are used in ice cream? This year my main focus is on strawberries and have an incredible lineup of solid producers as well as some oddballs to try out. It may not have been Hugh that worked on this peach but someone, somewhere did. I still would like to know the history behind the Nanaimo Peach and to that end contacted One Green World nursery in Oregon. They don't answer their phones these days and when I left a message it was stated that their head horticulturist would get back to me. That was two weeks ago so it doesn't look like there is any info coming from them. I'll dig deeper with them in a month or so when the planting season slows down a bit. I should be able to dig into the owner of the patent on it and go from there. A girlfriend outside of Seattle had asked me what type of peach she should grow here in the PNW. Of course I mentioned the Nanaimo Peach and she ended up buying the last one from One Green World last fall. I see they are still sold out.

I suppose I don't know all the restrictions for bringing in this peach to Nanaimo but I am told it is based on phytosanitary conditions. I know it has a patent, it has a copyright on the name Nanaimo (how does that work?) and it has a trademark too. A real triple whammy...

 

I followed links from there and got to
PHYSICAL AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THREE U.S. STRAWBERRY CULTIVARS GROWN IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST - XIE - 2004 - Journal of Food Quality - Wiley Online Library
This 2003 article, not by Hugh, discusses Totem, Shuksan, and Puget Reliance.

Hugh seems to have been involved in Stolo: (99+) (PDF) Stolo Strawberry | Shahrokh Khanizadeh - Academia.edu

He won an award for that from the American Society for Horticultural Science.
The ASHS Outstanding Fruit Cultivar Award: A 25-year Retrospective in: HortScience Volume 48 Issue 1 (2013)

Sorry, @Al Chomica, we seem to be discussing strawberries now. And Hugh Daubeny. If you want to go back to peaches, you're going to have to take a stand. But I see you've had a hand in getting us here anyway.

 

I believe it is 'Totem' that is used (I'd have to search a video to refresh my memory), I don't know the other.

As for this peach: there is no registered trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office so far: Search trademark database . Copyright doesn't / can't apply. Lastly, there is no obvious patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office, though these are more difficult to find if one doesn't know the cultivar name (cultivated varieties will have cultivar names and may have trade names -- it looks like they are asserting that Nanaimo is the trade name, but... hard to say).

Oh, and for the record: Hugh's work for Ag Canada at the time was under the philosophy that the products of the government's work on breeding superior cultivars was for the benefit of everyone (including industry). So, the government didn't assert plant patents or the need for royalties--basically, the breeding work by Hugh was "given away". Those Spanish-grown London-bought raspberries I had? I suspect not a cent went back to Canada or to Hugh.

Things have changed, though. You can see this with the way new cultivars of apples developed in Summerland are introduced into the market now.

 

Nanaimo Peach

Cross referencing to a thread by Margot

Did you find your tree?

Any history details RE: this peach’s origin?

I hope so!

 

This is still under a search on my part. Based on posts in this thread I don't feel strongly that it was Hugh Daubney who created the peach. I have contacted One Green World twice now and just get an auto-reply that they will get back to me as soon as possible. The first time was two weeks ago and they don't answer their phones. I'll wait until the planting season slows down a bit and will pick it up when I can talk to their head horticulturist. They sell them so they obviously have a source somewhere. I hope to re-establish this PLC-resistant specimen and to that end my long-term plan is to pot up as many St Julienne plum rootstocks as I can dig out of the garden to act as future hosts. I've grafted peach, several plum varieties and two different almonds onto these rootstocks and so far everything has caught and is growing well.

 

Ordering Info

Wholesale but maybe can direct you accordingly

Their details about respect for patents and TM’s are interesting for non-growers like me - I had not really thought about the fact someone put time and money in to these endeavours (I for example readily root a bit of forsythia or divide a rhubarb for a neighbor giveaway)

 

Yes, this was a good lead also. I called and talked to a 21-year veteran at the nursery. She couldn't remember where or when it showed up but the owner might. I have a query off to him and suspect we will speak soon enough. When talking to the horticulturist she said Canada now prohibits stone fruit and many other imports unless they come with a virus-free certificate that takes five years for a nursery to achieve. She said they were so popular in the US that it wasn't worth the effort to ship to Canada because they get sold out every year anyway. I may just change my focus and look for a living tree here around Nanaimo. How long do they live? Twenty years? Fifty? Someone must have one somewhere...

 

Oh yes. She said they did go through the process of obtaining a virus-free certificate years ago but even after paying fees their shipment was refused entry into Canada...

 

Well, until there is some documentation, like trademark registration or plant patent, or even some details on the hybridizer / discoverer / cultivar name, I am skeptical.

 

Since I started off this Nanaimo Peach thread I believe it is time to provide an update. I thought I had discovered one growing on one of the sub-sub Islands in the Salish Sea. After conducting Bokashi Composting workshops to people on Cortes I learned about a peach tree growing there that does not get PLC. One of the students was a landscaper who physically prunes this tree every winter as part of her regular duties. She provided me with a phone number of the owner and I gave him a dingle. He said the tree was already on the property when he bought it 10 years ago. He also grafts the scions onto rootstock and as I started to get excited he mentioned he has a five year waiting list. I asked if he knew who had planted the tree and he gave me the number of the previous owner, who he still knew. I called him up and he mentioned he had brought a random peach pit from the Okanagan many years ago and planted it. This tree could well be a Nanaimo Peach, or not, in that it is completely PLC resistant. I had the landscaper take a picture of the aspect and exposure and yes, it is out in the open and doesn't get PLC. Is it a Nanaimo Peach? Likely not. But that doesn't really matter because it is not the name of a cultivar I am looking for but rather a tasty peach that is PLC-resistant. I have sent the landscaper some Illinois Everbearing Mulberries and some Sichuan Peppercorn plants as a bribe and she has promised to send me as many scions as I want from this tree in Feb or March. I have a dozen rootstocks to graft onto and will conduct observations and experiments along the way.

Having said all that, I made contact with Tom at TallClover Farm in WA. who grows the Nanaimo Peach and writes about how great it is in his farm blog. He wouldn't send illegal scions to Canada but he did promise to send me seeds that apparently grow true to type. In August I contacted him to discover that he had been away and the deer broke into his yard and ate all the peach crop except for a few peaches high up on the tree. He sent me 8 pits that I stratified for three months in the fridge and just yesterday I cracked the pits open and conducted a couple seed soaks overnite along with seeds from Paw Paw, Sichuan Peppercorn, Yuzu, Capsicum flexuosum, Rubus niveas and Flying Dragon Orange. Fingers are crossed for all these seeds as they are all difficult to propagate. Now I wait for that spark of life to emerge...

 

= not an existing named variety. Unless the pit happened to result from apomixis - if Prunus persica ever exhibits this. Speaking of naming since Nanaimo has been claimed as a trademark by presentation of the word (within the context of a peach) with "TM" on the end a cultivar name will have to be created to designate the associated genetic material. Because a trademark is never a plant or any other object.