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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We wrap up today with our September check-in with BLTrees, this year-long project we're doing to follow the life of a tree, maybe your tree, the one you've adopted for this year for the sake of this project, and to track its changes through the four seasons to really notice these large living organisms that share our space.

New York City and the surrounding area have millions of them, obviously. We hope you pick yours to follow this year and have been tweeting us a photo each month using the #BLTrees.

We've got one more month to join us for this. The series concludes next month. The first one was in November last year so the last one will be in October. Today with Fall starting on Thursday, we're going to get you ready for apple picking with a look at trees that bear fruit, and not just apples and pears, my tree on my block is actually a pear tree though I don't think it produces edible fruit here in Manhattan, but there's way more to the story of trees that do bear fruit.

Back with us is our guide for this adventure, Urban Ecologist Marielle Anzelone, founder of New York City Wildflower Week who proposed this project, and has offered her expertise throughout this year in putting it together. Hello again, Marielle.

Marielle Anzelone: Hi, Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: This month, she is joined by Brandi Cannon-Force, a botanist and science educator, formerly of New York now living in California. Brandi, welcome.

Brandi Cannon-Force: Good morning. How are you all today?

Brian Lehrer: We're doing great. It's early in the morning for you. Not so much for us. Marielle, before we dig in on fruits, can you remind everybody how to play along for these last couple of months of the project?

Marielle Anzelone: Yes. We've been asking everyone to pick a tree that you like or is close to you and take a little bit of a deeper dive, come closer to it, get to know it, pay attention to it. We want people to take photos once a month. Please share them with us on Twitter using the #BLTrees. People who have questions and comments, there have been people who've been supporting each other and cheering each other on about their trees so it's been a really nice community project.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you have a question about fruit trees that are producing this time of year, how to identify them, whether the strange thing dropping from your tree is actually a fruit? Are you growing trees that produce the edible kind of fruit? Any figs left in Brooklyn, for example? Call us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Brandi, how do botanists define fruit trees exactly, because I gather it's not the same way a farmer would, is that right?

Brandi Cannon-Force: That is true. We usually define fruit trees as a tree that bears fruit from a flowering part that usually contains a seed. A fruit has to contain a seed. Whereas the fruit trees that we all know and love today, we usually think about human consumption and something that may have been manipulated by humans for its favorable traits.

Brian Lehrer: What are some of the fruits of trees we might not be aware are fruits? Like those sweet gumballs or the little helicopters from maple trees, are those fruits?

Brandi Cannon-Force: Absolutely. I love those little helicopters from maple trees. I like watching them twirl down as the wind blows in New York City. Yes, those are absolutely fruits. Some other fruits we may not think about are acorns. Maybe chestnuts, pecans. Nuts are definitely certain types of fruits.

Brian Lehrer: Almonds, hickory nuts, different kinds of nuts that come from trees and acorns. I never would have thought of them as a fruit but I guess by your definition having to do with seeds, they are.

Brandi Cannon-Force: Absolutely. Because they contain a seed, we can refer to them as fruits although there's many different types of fruits. We can call them a lot of different categories whether they're what we call drupes, which usually have a stony seed inside, or whether we call them berries, which you are familiar like grapes or actually bananas or berries, avocados and berries, or what we remember as pomes like apples.

Brian Lehrer: Marielle, what can we tell about a tree from whether it produces fruit or not or what the fruit looks like that's in addition to just the fact that it's producing fruit?

Marielle Anzelone: Yes. One of the most basic divisions of plants is whether they are flowering or not flowering. Flowering plants are relatively recent, evolutionarily, I think, like 350 million years ago. Flowers are recent plant innovation. All flowers then have, like Brandi said, fruits. It's not just trees, this is all plants, and trees are just a structural form of a plant. Anything that has a fruit had a flower on it.

I think that that's a really important thing to consider because when Brandi was mentioning oaks and nuts, nuts are fruits. What does that mean? It means that our oak trees have flowers on them. The flowers as we mentioned a little earlier in the season, oak flowers are wind pollinated, they're not assisted by insects, which tend to have really showy flowers. Wind pollinated flowers don't need to spend metabolic energy on making petals to attract insects, so they're tiny little green dangly things and then they just blow a lot of pollen around and it sticks to our eyes, and that causes allergies.

Yes, I think that that's one of the most important things. Another then is that these reproductive structures, the flowers and the fruits of plants are the things that taxonomists use to gather them together as related, so it puts them into different families so that's a taxonomic category that talks about the relationships among plants.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. We have two callers calling in about fig trees. Let's take one of them. Celso in Elizabeth, you're on WNYC. Hello, Celso.

Celso: Hello. I was listening to your show, and it's very interesting. The fact of the matter is fake trees are basically a beautiful tree that given the fact that you can have fruit up to October, it's the kind of tree that you need to protect it in the winter months. Also, the tree that you would end up getting, unfortunately, a lot of these trees that you would buy, like say at Home Depot or Lowe's, unfortunately come from areas that are not the same as the East Coast. What I mean by that is, they're from warmer climates so the chance of those trees surviving here in the East Coast are very slim.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting, Celso. Interesting. Brandi, can you put that in context because all kinds of plants in one area have been introduced purposely or not from other areas, which is sometimes good for the local environment and sometimes not? What about what Celso is describing with the kinds of trees that are sold, I guess, here for planting?

Brandi Cannon-Force: That's a really good question. As far as I know, when trees are grown on farms, specifically for it to be taken to nurseries so people can then plant them in their own backyards or in their own property, they're grown in mass production. I think, much like if you were planting in your own garden, sometimes you fill a bunch of seeds in, you get the same plant but a bunch of different conditions of those plants. That means some may be more weedy, some might be more lanky, some, I guess, less healthy or less, where you would probably want them to be and then they're sold off. That might be why you're getting a fig tree that isn't at its peak condition, but yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I'm told that many of the fig trees came over in the early 20th century, but now they're sold in greenhouses. Danny has a question about a tree on the Lower East Side. Danny, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Danny: Hi. We have a Kentucky coffee tree on the corner of 14th Street and 1st Avenue. I don't know if you've seen those brown pods that fall down. They're a lot more stubby than those long thin ones that come from other trees that are more common. I've seen this Kentucky coffeetree, and I looked it up. Apparently, the coffee is really not drinkable, but people used to make coffee from these pods. I read that they planted these all over the East Coast, and they're sort of extinct in its natural. Do you know anything about the Kentucky coffeetree?

Brian Lehrer: You said that's at 14th and 1st. Marielle, I wonder if you even know the particular tree.

Marielle Anzelone: Well, no, I don't know that particular tree, but the Kentucky coffeetree is definitely planted fairly frequently throughout the city, so it's not a hard street tree to find. The fruits that he's describing are what you would call legumes. That means that it's in the pea family. It's related to the larger family of peas. There are a number of trees, including black locust and honey locust, that also have pod shoots fruits on them. Again, fruit is the botanical term because nobody is going to eat these.

The coffee, I guess it was like desperate times, desperate measures, and using the beans, roasting them, drying them, and using them for coffee, but I've heard tales that it doesn't taste great. I know that it's native to the US, but it's native outside of our New York City range. I don't actually know the story of the tree in the wild, I'm not sure how it's doing, but it's definitely something people can see in New York City as a street tree.

Brian Lehrer: Brandi, do you know why evolution created so many different kinds of fruit trees or how much humans have had a role in what trees bear edible fruit and how they've developed over time?

Brandi Cannon-Force: Yes, I can give this one a go. First of all, diversity. Diversity is always the reason that we find so many different types of species and genera in our types of plants that we find in different places. Also, depending on your location, you get a nice variety of different types of plants. Humans have had a huge part in the way that fruits have shaped themselves mostly because of dispersal.

When we're thinking about animal dispersal or human dispersal of these seeds, and we're thinking about how we further the means of reproduction for plants and how they're able to germinate after, it's really important for us to be able to get the seed to another location. Marielle mentioned wind pollination earlier, but human pollination, we can get seeds up to 100 kilometers away from where that plant originally grew. Being able to do that increases diversity, and it allows for plants to grow and thrive in different areas. Thus, I think, in that way, it's really great for plants to do their own thing.

Brian Lehrer: That's fascinating. As we approach apple-picking season, Marielle, what are we eating when we eat an apple exactly? From what you both said on the show so far, we know we don't eat apple seeds. If we don't eat the seeds themselves, are we eating a seed pod when we eat an apple?

Marielle Anzelone: Yes, essentially. A fruit is the ovary of the flower that's been fertilized. Then there tends to be some kind of packet of starches that are mixed in with it. Then when the fruit drops to the ground or however it disperses, for an apple, let's say dropping to the ground, the fleshy part that we eat would be the thing that would rot and create a nice little bit of fertilizer in which the seeds can germinate. That's the point of fruit, is often that, or it's protecting the seeds, but the seeds are the things that are the most important.

An apple, the term, as Brandi mentioned earlier, is that it's a pome, P-O-M-E. The part that we're eating, it's the endocarp, which is the fleshy bit that we're eating. The inside part is the ovary. If you cut an apple in half, and you're looking at it, it's almost cartilage-like, and the seeds are inside, but there's that center core piece that you don't want to [inaudible 00:15:08] into, that was where the ovary was. The underside of the apple, there's a tiny little, furry, round circle, and those are the leftover male anthes of the flower. The stem on the top is where the flower was attached to the tree. You can see the remnants of what it was in the fruit that it is as you're eating it.

Brian Lehrer: Allison in Greenpoint. I know that we're talking about nature in this segment, this is trees segment, in our #BLTrees year-long series, but Allison in Greenpoint has a property rights question that I think you two can answer. Allison, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Allison: Hi. Actually, I'm a renter in Greenpoint, and my landlord has a huge apple tree, old apple tree, peach tree, pear tree. I have access to them, I could eat them if I wanted to, but I don't know if the ground's been tested. Is it safe to eat fruit in the city that you don't know how the good the soil is?

Brian Lehrer: Brandi, you want to take that? Whether or not she is taking somebody else's property, is it safe to eat fruit from a tree that you just stumble upon?

Brandi Cannon-Force: As a person who doesn't forage often, I always say, especially if it's on someone else's property, I would usually ask first. If it's on property that you already have permission for, I don't think the soil is going to have as big of a consequence through the fruit, unless you're on really metallic soil, but you aren't going to usually find fruit trees on that type of soil. I would say if you know what the fruit is, and you're confident that you know what the fruit is, you should be able to wash and eat it and be fine.

Brian Lehrer: But you have to be confident.

Brandi Cannon-Force: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Allison, I hope that's enough guidance. Here's something related, I think. Eugenia in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eugenia.

Eugenia: Hello. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can.

Eugenia: Okay. Thank you. I have a similar question, but mine is my neighbor has a tree, and it [unintelligible 00:17:33] like a vine, and it has these small grapes on it. We tried to eat one because when I was little, we used to-- In Brooklyn, we had these small grapes growing in our backyard. They were the ones that had the real sour out skin, and real sweet insides were really nice, but when I tasted this one, it was really bitter. My question is, can grapes be poisonous? We won't eat anymore, but can grapes be poisonous?

Brian Lehrer: Brandi, real quick?

Marielle Anzelone: No. Oh, sorry. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Oh, was that Marielle? Go ahead.

Marielle Anzelone: Just to say, if it's a grape, and it's something of the-- Grape is a genus, and the genus is Vitis. If it's a real grape, then no, grapes are not poisonous to people, but it could be that grapes are also part of this larger grape family where things look like grapes. The confidence level with which you're saying you know it's a grape, it might not quite be the case. If it's really a grape, no. None of the grapes that we have are poisonous. In fact, we have two different species of grapes, or three rather, that are actually native to New York City. The Concord grape is from the fox grapevine, which is also another native species. All of those are native and grow wild here.

Brian Lehrer: That's another point of buzzkill on this thread, one of my producers just sent me a note that one of our former colleagues, [unintelligible 00:19:10] Diaz reported in 2018 that a study by Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory revealed that many private backyards in Greenpoint, our first caller there was from Greenpoint on this, are contaminated with high levels of lead. It says the residue in the soil from the heavy metals produced here decades ago by now-defunct smelters, municipal incinerators, and leaded gasoline may be leading to continued exposure in soil. Just saying.

I was going to go to Bob in Denville as our last caller, but he hung up, but I'll ask his question because it's the one that probably everybody wants to know anyway in our last 30 seconds. Marielle, he said he was up in Maine where the leaves are usually turning colors by now, but for some reason, they aren't and he wants to know if that's climate change but the follow-up is, and again, we have 30 seconds for this is so when's peak?

Marielle Anzelone: Well, peak depends on where you are. Being up there now, leaves are definitely be turning color but leaf color change depends on a number of things, including ambient temperature and including water availability. I can't speak to those there but we've certainly had a hot dry summer in New York City. We'll see how that affects our fall foliage.

Brian Lehrer: Which we tend to make it later?

Marielle Anzelone: Yes. Our peak would be let's see, probably the first weekend of November.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Marielle Anzelone: A little around Halloween. That would be our peak.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Marielle Anzelone, founder of New York City Wildflower Week and Brandi Cannon-Force, botanist and science educator. Now living in California, formerly of New York. Thank you both so much.

Brandi Cannon-Force: Thank you.

Marielle Anzelone: Thanks, Brian.

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