The Clonal Archive

The apple orchard, with the clonal archive, in May when the trees are in full bloom. Visitors are sitting in the sun by café tables, which are spread out on the lawn in the orchard. In the background is the manor.

In Linnaeus’ day part of this area was a kitchen garden, where vegetables were grown for the family’s use. Today it serves as a ‘clonal archive’ for old cultivars of apples and pears. Linnaeus’ Hammarby is a host site for the Nordic Gene Bank, helping to conserve old varieties of cultivated plants that have to be grown on a continuous basis if they are not to die out.

Here some 30 different cultivars of fruit trees from the Mälardalen region can be studied, including ‘Fulleröpäron’ and ‘Wennströmspäron’ (pears) and ‘Druväpple’ (apple). One variety from further afield is ‘Linnés Stenbrohult’. It was registered under this name at Alnarp and the Balsgård research station in the south of Sweden, and is believed to originate in Stenbrohult parish in Småland, where Linnaeus was born.

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Last modified: 2021-01-22