Today there was a mulberry and stone fruit tasting at Wolfskill. It was a great event, as usual.
John Preece commented on the history of Wolfskill. Two brothers from Kentucky were given large land grants after control was handed over to the U.S. and John Wolfskill was grafted a very large area that includes the present day Wolfskill Experimental Orchard. This portion of the property was given to the University of California by John Wolfskill on the condition that fruit trees be grown on it. The fig trees the line the driveway and throughout the road and property boundaries were planted in 1858. Eventually, UC Davis handed over the repository responsibilities to the USDA, providing the land and water for free. John Preece made it clear "We are not with the University of California, we are Federal USDA employees." (I make this point because, as I've pointed out previously, reference by some people to the fig cuttings coming from UC Davis is not correct.) He said that UC Davis will sometimes access some of their accessions for research but that USDA does do considerable research as well (John also manages the Parlier operations where research and growing is conducted). He said that when the Chico repository facilities were being closed the olive material was offered to USDA Davis and the material was budded onto the huge olive trees at Wolfskill around 1952-1956. I didn't catch the name of the individual responsible for this task but he drew a map of the location of varieties and later assisted when cuttings were taken from these trees to start new trees for a formal germplasm block for olives. However, Jenny Smith later told a small group which included myself that subsequent DNA testing revealed that about 25% of the material collected was accidentally taken from the 'Mission' stock which had been budded onto.