pendragon orchard and vine
There's No Place Like Loam
The Pomona Tree Project: A Record-Setting Act of Biodiversity
One tree, fourteen fruit species — where myth, science, and art meet to challenge what a tree can be.
Invest in a Record-Setting Act of Biodiversity
The Pomona Project is engineering a living Rosaceae archive — one tree carrying more than 14 fruit species and 70+ cultivars. This work blends horticultural science, myth, and art to push the limits of grafting, preserve genetic diversity, and set a new Guinness World Record.
Frequency
One time
Monthly
Amount
$20
$50
$100
$200
Other
The Pomona Project seeks to set a new benchmark for biodiversity by engineering a single tree to carry fourteen fruit species and more than seventy cultivars. Using intergrafts — genetic bridges such as hawthorn, medlar, and shipova — the project explores the limits of graft compatibility within the Rosaceae family. At once scientific experiment, conservation archive, and public artwork, the tree functions as a genetic ark: preserving rare cultivars, testing climate resilience, and inspiring new approaches to food diversity in an era of ecological uncertainty.
Project Goals
Set a World Record
-
Surpass the current Guinness record of 5 fruit species on one tree by engineering a living scaffold that carries 14+ species and 70+ cultivars.
-
Document the grafts with scientific precision: mapped junctions, photographic evidence, bloom and fruiting verification.
Advance Horticultural Science
-
Test the limits of interstock compatibility (e.g., using "genetic translators" (scion) as a bridge to carry apple, pear, medlar, quince on incompatible rootstock).
-
Build a dataset on graft success, failure, and long-term viability under Pacific Northwest maritime conditions.
-
Contribute new knowledge about how scion vigor, chill hours, and soil tolerance interact on a shared host.
Preserve Biodiversity
-
Create a living genetic library on one trunk — heirloom plums, rare apricots, antique pears, experimental cherries.
-
Protect rare cultivars from loss by keeping them active, grafted, and observed.
-
Build awareness of fruit diversity beyond supermarkets and seed banks.
Inspire Through Art & Education
-
Present the tree as a living sculpture: a fusion of Roman myth (Pomona), botanical science, and human imagination.
-
Offer public workshops where participants graft onto the tree, linking community directly to the experiment.
-
Partner with schools and institutions to use the tree as a teaching tool — genetics, ecology, conservation, and art.
-
Create content (press, photography, documentary) that makes biodiversity visible, viral, and experiential.
Why Do This?
The Pomona Project exists because art, science, and conservation all demand experiments at the edge. A record-setting act of biodiversity is both a gift to knowledge and a spectacle for the public imagination.
Resilience Through Diversity
Monocultures dominate modern agriculture. When one pest or climate shock arrives, entire crops collapse. By compressing dozens of species and cultivars into one organism, the Pomona Project demonstrates how diversity itself is a survival strategy. A tree that carries many genetic lineages is a living argument against fragility.
Science, Myth, and Public Imagination
The tree is not just a scientific trial. It’s also an artwork that makes resilience visible: cherries flowering beside apricots, pears ripening next to medlars. It carries the myth of Pomona, Roman goddess of fruit, into the Anthropocene — an emblem of how imagination and science must combine to meet planetary crises.
Adapting to Climate Change
The climate is shifting faster than conventional orchards can adapt. Chill hours, pollination windows, and bloom times are in flux. The Pomona Project experiments with species across different climate niches, testing how they respond side by side under the same conditions. It’s a small-scale laboratory for climate adaptation in real time.
A Record-Setting Act of Biodiversity
Guinness World Records recognizes only five fruit species on a single tree. The Pomona Project aims for fourteen, nearly tripling the record. But the true record is not the number — it is the act: proving that biodiversity can be cultivated, engineered, and celebrated at a time when it is most at risk.
Food Security and Conservation
Global diets rely on a narrow slice of available fruit biodiversity. Thousands of cultivars are disappearing as orchards consolidate. By grafting heirlooms, wild relatives, and experimental crosses into one living scaffold, the project becomes a genetic ark — not a museum specimen, but a productive tree that could inspire how we think about food security in an age of shortages.
