Fast growing tall trees

[anivad]

I'm writing a sci-fi story about kids bred in enclosed underground environments, raised by robots without any access to outside society. A couple of them grow a tree from fruit seeds taken from their food, via artificial bright lighting in a garden. The tree should be taller than it is wide, with branches sturdy enough for a young kid to climb, and

Comments

[umlautless]

FWIW, the reason fruit trees tend to sprawl is that they're groomed so that you can pick from them. We had a pear tree that my grandfather refused to allow to be shaped, so it was quite tall, but the pears at the top would ripen and then fall to the ground because you couldn't reach them for harvest before they spoiled on the tree.

Then you have pears exploding across the driveway and attracting hornets.

(Allow me to tell you how much I hate fruit trees. No one understands the pain of my childhood!)

[anivad]

I didn't know that, so thanks for the info!

hornets D:

[debirlfan]

We have a (supposedly) dwarf pear tree that's never really been pruned that's a good 30 or 40 feet tall, but I don't think it's sturdy enough that you'd be able to climb very high in it. And yes, the pears fall off - the other day one nearly hit the deer that was standing under the tree eating fallen fruit.

[empty_mirrors]

Sweet or wild cherry (Prunus avium) might do the trick. It seems to be a pretty fast grower and the fruit is edible and it's a sturdy tree so long as it's allowed to grow naturally.

[anivad]

ooh, yes. Thanks! That's definitely a possibility.

[dinogrrl]

Our white peach teach is pretty tall (we never seem to get around to pruning it), I'd estimate it at 20 feet right now after 6 or 7 years. It's probably climbable if you're an agile little kid, and it did start flowering/producing fruit within 2 or 3 years of us planting it. I should say that we didn't raise it from seed, though, it was about 5 feet tall when we got it. And I also have no idea if this is how a peach tree typically behaves, but that's our experience.

[reapermum]

Left to their own devices trees grow like people. Their life span is longer than ours so they don't have to rush through their childhood and reach puberty as babies. The fruit trees you plant in your garden are not on their own roots but roots chosen to stunt their growth and force them to flower and fruit while still young. And when you buy them they are four or five years old already.

[rosefox]

How about a coconut palm? It grows to about 30 meters, a nimble person can climb it, and it bears fruit within six or seven years. All you need is one whole coconut to start it off.

(This is also generally a reminder to look outside your culture for "common" fruit trees, unless the kids' environment is deliberately North American.)

Mulberry trees might also work; they're easy to grow from seeds, they fruit after about 10 years, and they're great climbing trees.

[karisitas]

We have a huge and very tall mulberry tree ... it is not at all climbable! The branches are very thin and flimsy. I didn't think they were climbing trees. Wonder if mine is an aberration? Or maybe it is still a baby? If so, it is a huge baby!

[orange_fell]

There were two mulberries in the yard of the house I grew up in. They had probably been there 25+ years at the time and had many long flimsy branches, but also some thick sturdy ones growing out from the trunk. My sisters and I were always itching to climb them, but the trunks were just too tall; to get to the lowest branch of the shorter tree required a boost, and the other one was never conquered at all.

[anivad]

I'm actually living in Singapore, and there are a whole bunch of coconut palm trees just outside my apartment block. XD (also, banana plants, which have flowers that look like terrifying alien creatures.) But the trees here are all tropical, and the story's setting is a controlled environment which I thought would probably more closer emulate a temperate climate. At least, I wouldn't want to live in a place with the kind of heat we get here at the equator, where my favourite thing about buildings is that they let you get out of the sun and are usually equipped with air-conditioning.

I was looking for something with the more regular type of branches, though, where for instance one could sit on them.