An artist and art professor from Syracuse University, Sam Van Aken, was working on locating specimens back in 2008 and he intended to create a multi-colored blossom tree. He ended up acquiring a 3-acre orchard from the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station.
He was always interested in tree grafting from an early age and he made use of the 250 heritage varieties that were available in the orchard to come up with one amazing tree.
Known as the Frankenstein-esque tree, he used stone fruits, plums, peaches, almonds, apricots and nectarines. It took him five years to graft all of them into a single tree and it was called the Tree of 40 Fruit Project, which had 40 fruit buds in perfect sync.
There are at least 16 types of Trees of 40 Fruit and they are planted all over the US, such as Newton, Pound Ridge, Massachusetts, Pound Ridge, New York, Short Hills, Arkansas, Bentonville, California etc. The trees are specific to the surroundings they are planted in.
You can watch the video to have more information.
More Info: iflscience (h/t: National Geographic)
