Blenheim is yucky mush in my greenhouse. I think it's better in a mild environment. Sugar Pearls has never even shown a blossom inside or out. It gets one more yr to prove itself. And my newly planted Chinese is on suicide watch. I don't think it's going to survive the spring freeze. No squirrels here. They'd starve to death. Two straight yrs no fruit and no pecans.

Loquats look very different. Unless you are using the word 'loquat' to denote something other than Eriobotrya japonica. Loquats are yellow, not pink, have no bloom, are much more egg shaped, have a marked blossom end and contain several seeds, not a pit. And the leaves of loquat are entirely different from those in 1507 mouse's photos. The bloom on the fruit and the foliage on the tree is a dead giveaway for some kind of plum. 'Mirabelle' covers various cultivars plus there are innumerable seedling plums in hedges and woods all over Europe which don't have any proper name at all but which sometimes produce very tasty fruits.

If squirrels are part of the fruit growing equation you do not want to attempt sweet pit apricots. Stark sells a lot of junk as exclusives and I have found their exclusive apricots to strike out in the northeast. You need to research the varieties yourself if you want to choose ones that excel in your specific region- zones are about survival to lowest temps, not overall longevity and not at all about productivity. Starks is like most mass marketing. catalog proliferating nurseries in that they like to use gimmicks to sell their trees. What is unique about them (in this class) is that they also sell and market to commercial growers and grow all (or most of) their own trees, so if you know what you are ordering, they can be a fine source. Just don't be seduced by the catalogs.

I still think it was you but don't remember that much if kids were there. Wife black straight hair? Last Saturday at the Devonian gardens we talked about prunus Siberica and thought it to be a rather minor deviation of prunus Manchirica. Even though Siberica is likely to carry over the pink I still have one reserved thought that Robert Purvis knows of about Siberica. That it is an incredibly slow grower and is dwarf. Robert used to live in Alaska and in Idaho still does nothing but apricot in one of his collections in Washington. Gabe Botar was at the gardens who is another person knowing a great deal about apricot. He had scions of a prolific dwarf apricot with small good tasting fruits that he produced from crossed parents. Good stuff because slow growing and dwarf is always great for extreme cold or unprotected sites. For example flowering under the snow would delay bloom and escape the damaging spring frosts. If Clair Lammers (formerly from Edmonton) from Alaska ever grew Gabes apricot he would at least had fruits from this where all other his Manchurica experiments failed. My grandfather may have been around as a retired forester at the time those were planted and lived very close by. Only a remote possibility exists. I came across the trees a few years ago because I wanted to visit my childhood memories of the wading pool that still there in that place and not that anybody told me. Who ever planted them it seems very possible it was done from self pollinated Goldcot seeds similar the way you collected from the pink tree the seeds for another generation.