Trees of 40 Fruits

Syracuse University professor Sam Van Aken's design for a tree bearing 40 different kinds of fruit is getting worldwide attention.

(Sam Van Aken)

A Syracuse University art professor is getting worldwide attention for his Tree of 40 Fruit, an idea that ripened more than half a decade ago.

Sam Van Aken designed the stunning, multi-colored tree that can bear 40 different kinds of stone fruit -- those with pits. The artist and sculptor, who teaches at SU's College of Visual and Performing Arts, creates the trees through grafting.

Sculptor Sam Van Aken, an associate professor at Syracuse University, poses for a photo in 2011 with the trees he was developing to bear 40 different varieties of fruit.

Syracuse University told The Post-Standard in 2011 that he designed the "living art" as a symbol for the Central New York school's 9/11 memorial service. The tree was planted on the SU quad three years ago, and tended to by Van Aken in hopes of growing various types of cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots.

"It's a metaphor for a lot of things," Van Aken told the newspaper then, though he specifically chose 40 because it's a number that appears often in the Bible. "It's a number that represents bounty."

According to the Daily Mail, the project began in 2008 when he discovered an orchard at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva that had more than 200 varieties of plums and apricots. When he learned it was to be abandoned, he picked up the lease and began experimenting with "sculpture through grafting."

The British publication describes the process as taking a sliver off a tree, including the bud, and inserting it into another, similar tree with different fruits. The piece is taped and then heals over the winter, becoming a part of the same tree as both fruits continue to grow.

Sam Van Aken's Tree of 40 Fruit design, as shared in 2011.

Van Aken tells Epicurious he now has 16 trees in museums, community centers and private art collections across the country. He still sees it as a work of art he hopes will inspire others around the world.

"As the project evolved, it took on more goals," he told the food site. "I realized that for various reasons, including industrialization and the creation of enormous monocultures, we are losing diversity in food production and that heirloom, antique, and native varieties that were less commercially viable were disappearing. I saw this as an opportunity to, in some way, preserve these varieties."

Now his gorgeous design is getting even more attention. ABC described the Tree of 40 Fruit as "something out of the future," CBS called it "fascinating food for thought," and Huffington Post imagined it being created in "laboratory of a mad scientist" like Dr. Frankenstein.

The trees bearing dozens of different kinds of fruit can currently be seen in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Short Hills, New Jersey; Louisville, Kentucky; Pound Ridge, New York; and on the Syracuse University campus. Van Aken, who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, told ABC the fruits ripen at different times between July and October, and all are edible.

Still, Van Aken remains modest about his project's implications.

"I saw somewhere on a website where somebody said that the Tree of 40 Fruit will end world hunger," he told CBS on Thursday. "And it's like, 'No, it won't. Not at all.' But what it can do is, I like to think, that it can lead to that type of thinking."

Note: Epicurious is owned by Conde Nast, an Advance publication, also the parent company of syracuse.com.