Steven For almost anyone including a botanist it would likely require a good bit of research and brain scratching to answer your question.

On top of this you chose not to use common plant names which makes most of what you have written unintelligible to most of us myself included.

Most of us here are not professors of botany nor certified botanist.
There are some trained botanists here but again your question seams so unmanageably broad.
You might as well be asking a stranger to write a doctrinal thesis on compatible and incompatible pollination of all things flora and fauna.

Of course now that I have written this someone with much more knowledge than I will likely come along and answer all of you questions. Or not.

I think with many of these, different chromosome numbers and sterile hybrids will be the biggest issues. However, triploids (and 5x, 7x hybrids) can be fruitful for some fruits (many apple cultivars are 3x), but could be a dead end for further breeding in others. Also, for many of the stone fruits, embryo rescue may be required to get hybrids. However, never say never-plants can often find ways to do unexpected things.

Most any Ribes can be crossed, but species in different sections will usually result in sterile hybrids. Fertility can be restored by converting these hybrids to tetraploids, the method used to create Jostaberries. Amelanchier, Aronia, and Sorbus, will all interbreed quite freely, although there are 2x and 4x Aronia races. Both Nero and Viking are 4x, while most Sorbus and serviceberries are 2x. Triploid hybrids involving these species are usually apomictic. Same with the hawthorns.

A large crabapple would be an oxymoron, as crab apples are defined as apples with small fruits (

I would think that to really control the breeding you would have to bag or cage your "mother" plant's blossoms and hand pollinate with whatever you desire so whether they were growing near each other wouldn't really matter. I know that in ornamental plant breeding programs they will isolate each flower on a stem separately with its own bag & tag showing who the father was and when the hand pollination took place. Even if someone else has crossed two species on your list before you should try to duplicate it since hybrids can vary so much, you might come up with a superior fruit than they did.

that the damn plants don't read the books, and fornicate wildly, producing unlikely children. Some of the said children are useful. I'd just plant them and let them at it.

If your goal is to breed purely native plants, you'll be making controlled crosses anyway (bagging flowers to keep out other pollen) so it shouldn't matter what else is in your garden.

That said, if you're growing and breeding so many natives, I don't see how you'd have room or energy left to grow aliens.

Fragaria virginiana has been worked on a lot already, as it's one of the parents of the common garden strawberry.

First-off, impressive as ALWAYS, Kiwifruit! I should have thought to drop you an email. Btw, I think you said you were looking into picking-up a certain book (forgot the subject matter) a few months back that I should drop you an email for your review of it - maybe that wasn't you?

I didn't know that chokeberries, pears, and mountain ash could cross with serviceberries (just knew that serviceberries chould be used as rootstock for them).

What I gather from what you've written, even if hybridization occurred between the various native hawthorns, various native blueberries, between pear-serviceberry-[some]chokeberries, etc. these would likely be infertile donkies.

I guess that apple orchards have made it impossible to know if your average crab apple (such as Malus coronaria) doesn't have some Malus x domestica in their lineage since they hybridize, or would the union between M. coronaria nad M. x domestica result in a sterile hybrid?

Kiwifruit,

I don't want to do embryonic rescue, since I don't want any native/non-native hybrids. As for sterile hybrids, I can deal with that; i.e. say if my Sorbus americana (American mountain ash) hybridized with my pears - at least the offspring would be sterile and I will not risk diluting the gene-pool of my native Aronia spp. and Sorbus americana plants. I don't mind non-natives crossing with non-natives, such as with pear types, as I will not be breeding non-natives, just having them for fruit. You say that different chromosome numbers and sterile hybrids would be the biggest problem - well, I would not mind sterile hybrids that are easily identifiable as hybrids (since they will not be mistaken for a distinctive native, but rather a hybridization between native/non-native), but I don't know what is meant by different chromosomes counts?

John & theloud,

Well, although I will be doing controlled (amateur-level breeding), I wouldn't exclude the benefit of having random chance seedlings pop-up in the woods and meadow should the fruits be superior. So, in this case, I would highly prefer to KNOW that there is not ANY realistic chance that native/non-native hybridization has occurred.

theloud,

Although Fragaria virginiana is a parent of the common garden strawberry, that doesn't mean that this was a natural union, etc.

Thanks,
Steve

Steve,

I think you are thinking about me concerning the book. I responded to your 'Need Help on Forming Conservation Easement - Youpick & Garden' thread. The book was 'Taking a Garden Public: Feasibility and Startup' from the Garden Conservancy. I will send you an email about it here in a minute or two.

Brandon7

In general, plants in a different genus usually cannot cross-pollinate. That being said, there are a few instances where they have been.

It is possible to crossbreed a raspberry and strawberry together, but the result was a sterile hybrid that generally did not produce fruit (although sometimes a few seedless drupelets would form). http://the-biologist-is-in.blogspot.com/2015/01/hybrid-sterility-and-speciation.html

Apparently it is possible for a pear to pollinate apple, as they are both in the "sub-family" group 'Maloideae'. In one notable case researchers were able to obtain fertile hybrid offspring: F1 hybrid of cultivated apple (Malus × domestica) and European pear (Pyrus communis) with fertile F2 offspring, T. C. Fischer, Molecular Breeding, October 2014, Volume 34, Issue 3, pp 817-828

Sweet cherries (2n=16) and sour cherries (2n=32) can pollinate each other; the result is a hybrid triploid (24 chromosomes) tree whose fruit contains sterile seeds.

I believe Prunus Serotina is likely to be able to cross-pollinate with sour cherries and produce fertile offspring.

Luther Burbank: Methods and Discoveries 4: 138-140 (1914)

Pear Hybrids

I have hybridized the pear and the apple; also the pear and the quince. The seedlings from these unions have sometimes seemed thrifty, but were always infertile. They were highly interesting none the less.

The most successful cross was obtained by using the pollen of the Bartlett pear upon the Gravenstein apple.

The seedlings from this cross were divergent in appearance, and variable as to growth. One of the seedlings grew fully as fast as the ordinary apple seedling, but most of them had a sickly, dwarfed appearance, and some died after having made a foot of growth. Three or four of those that lived were grafted on an apple tree. They maintained moderate growth for several years, but were never healthy or vigorous, and never gave any intimation of blooming.

The results of the crosses between the pear and quince were closely similar. From these hybrids also I failed to secure fruit. Some grew with great vigor for years, while others almost refused to grow at all. In general appearance, and especially in foliage, the hybrids bear a closer resemblance to the pear than to the quince. But many appeared to be fairly good composites of these widely differing plants.

As there are many varieties both of pears and quinces, each having individual characters and diverse hereditary tendencies, an inviting field is open to the careful and patient experimenter in crossing these distinct yet related species. If the right combination can be effected, the results undoubtedly will be profoundly interesting and valuable. Precisely what these results will be, no one can predict. But that new fruits, making most valuable additions to the dietary, may ultimately be thus developed, there is no reason to doubt.