Guerilla Grafters Bring Forbidden Fruit Back to City Trees [NPR]

Tara Hui grafts a fruiting pear branch onto an ornamental pear tree. Photo: NPR

According to a story from National Public Radio, sneaky arborists in San Francisco have been bringing fruit back to street trees.

While all plant species are naturally able produce fruit, decades of urban foresters have planted our cities with ornamental varieties that rarely or never produce anything edible.

NPR interviews Tara Hui, who covertly grafts fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same species.  “What better to alleviate scarcity of healthy produce in an impoverished area than to grow them yourself and to have it available for free,” Ms. Hui remarks.

Carla Short of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, however, is concerned: “It gets dangerous very quickly… I mean the minute that fruit gets crushed on the sidewalk, it is slippery.”

One Web commenter counters with an added benefit of the illegal grafting: “Kids could discover fruit comes from trees, not grocery stores!”