Black Madeira tree (GRAFTED) - top Portuguese variety

The tree being offered in this auction is the very popular variety Black Madeira.  This tree was started on March 9, 2018 by grafting a scion taken from our mother tree onto a well-established tree of the variety 'Janice' acquired from the large wholesale Dave Wilson Nursery (we didn't have enough rootstock trees of our own to meet our needs).  The Janice tree is very well rooted and the graft is growing well.  The graft union will probably be protected with some yellow latex grafting sealer and some additional grafting tape to protect it from damage during shipment.  We have shipped numerous grafted trees in the past with great success.  The tree will be shipped in the 4" x 9" pot shown.  We ship trees only to US addresses.

Black Madeira is typically a slow-growing tree but by grafting it onto more vigorous rootstock, it can grow very well (our mother grafted tree puts out 5'-6' of growth each year while our other mother tree growing on it's own roots grows about 18").

I also included a photo of a pan of fig jam I made last summer using Black Madeira fruits so that I could enjoy them all year long. :)

Note:  I do not believe in assigning "strains" to this variety and consider this to be a source of confusion.  I see some people referring to "KK" and "Jon's" strain, etc. while even my friend KK shows in his auctions that he obtained his from Jon.  In discussing this in depth with Jon, it appears that the original Black Madeira tree was growing at a community college in the San Diego area which was destroyed when the campus was expanded.  The local CRFG chapter had shared cuttings from this tree for some years beforehand and USDA Davis shows that the source for their trees was CRFG.  The use of the "strain" terminology did not originated from those whose names gets associated with these strains but from subsequent growers.