PLEASE HELP! Very important decision, very little time

My Mother passed away recently, and her memorial services will be in 2 days. I need advice as to the longest lasting fruiting tree for her zone (8A) which will be planted in her memory with her ashes as part of the soil, so this is an important decision... It will be her permenent resting place for her. I do not want anything that will die in the next 20 years, and it does not need to be flashy... but it needs to bear fruit or nuts or somthing. PLEASE HELP! and THANKS!

Pecan? That'll live a good long time, maybe 100-200 years. It'll eventually make a huge tree too of course. If she liked pecan nuts, I'd think that would be a good memorial.

Resin

No ideas. But you have my sympathy. God bless.

Dear Calla,

I found some info at web sites that may help you:

I put in fruiting trees, zone 8: it produced over 100 trees, some of them quite lovely:
http://www.naturehills.com/catalog/fruit_trees.aspx?&zone=

Don't buy from them, because Garden Watchdog review isn't good, but the ideas are helpful.

Here is some very good guidance on zone 8 pear, cherry and apple trees:
http://www.gardenguides.com/87647-zone-8-fruit-tree-list.html

I hope this gets you going in the right direction. I am very sorry about your mother.

Donna

Most fruit trees are short lived in zone 8 except maybe black cherry and american persimmon.
Pecan is a good recomendation as well as black walnut chinese chestnut and hickory

what about a fig? they do very well in the southern states and live a long time. they don't get overly large but we have some in this area that are a good size.

Pecans are "pure South", and great trees, too.

I would have suggested persimmon--hardy and carefree and beautiful in the fall. I would be interested in knowing what you picked--

well this is a little late perhaps, but I would be concerned about planting something that bears anything like fruits or nuts. Someone has to tediously clean that up, and nuts are a pain when it has to be mowed around. Cemeteries hate that kind of thing. Mowing and weed eating the grounds is a huge piece of work. Most fruit trees are short lived it seems. Also we had some apples, but the bees loved them, and all summer we had yellow jackets around them, and nesting in the ground around the trees, and finally we cut them to get rid of all the bees!
I'm not familiar with your zone, but I would suggest magnolia? or some other tree that flowers but doesn't produce a mess! I would probably call an area conservation department or a state forestry service and ask them questions about the trees. I have called my state conservation dept for tree questions before and they are always very nice and helpful. Dogwoods and redbuds are pretty and cherry trees. Cherries generally produce a small fruit early in the year that the birds will pick off quickly. Mulberry tree may be an option as well. Persimmons, apples, and pears produce a larger very moist fleshy fruit that is likely to stink and draw bugs, plus they ripen later in the year which means they are drawing bugs all summer usually. There are fruitless varieties of course of pear and apple.

If I may, I differ with you, FrillyLilly--

Magnolia is very messy! Those big leaves stay around a long time when they drop and they are hard to rake and hard to mulch. Persimmons don't usually stink; when they fall the wildlife grab them up too fast! And we need to promote bees, whose numbers have been declining.

Yellow jackets don't nest preferentially next to fruit trees. They nest where they can get into the ground often near rotten tree roots--in my painful experience, having run over them more than once with a riding mower.

I have never been around magnolias, I just know they flower pretty and do not produce fruit so that is why I suggested that. They are barely hardy in my zone, unfortunately. I know they like warmer climate than MO. I had yellow jackets by all three of our apple trees and they nested in the ground in my flower beds around the trees. We had some contractors come to do some work on our basement and two of them were stung in one day. Then my father in law was stung a couple days later. The trees were cut shortly after and I rarely see any bees around here. Inviting bees in mass like that to a very public area, is not a good idea. Most cemeteries wouldn't allow a fruit tree anyway. If someone got stung it would be a liability issue I would think. I don't know how it is in other places, but here we have strict rules about gravesides in our local cemetery. You are only allowed to use artificial or cut flowers, they must be on the grave marker, not left on the ground. ect. A lot of rules.

Is this in a cemetery, or on private property? That makes a big difference.

Hi everyone,
I apologize that I did not respond sooner to the great topics that you all brought up, they were very usful, and I geatly appreciate all of the solid advice!

I wound up going with the LSU purple fig... I do not have any pis of it yet, but I will take some in the next couple of days. At first I was worried about it surviving due to the volume of the ashes being more than I had expected, and that the tree was planted with the roots touching them. It seems to be taking off now.

To answer the question and concern regarding the cemetary, it is on private property.

I googled some images. It's a beautiful choice.

My mother was ill about a year before she passed away in 2002, and some one gave her two enormous peace lilies.
We sold her home an no one knew what to do with these very large plants and they were being neglected, which they withstood quite well. So I took them home with me.

These eight years later it is so wonderful to have the thoughtful gifts that someone gave her when she was alive. I treasure them, especially when they bloom. I hope you get the same feeling in the future when you've had some time to heal. Your gesture is such a lovely one.

Donna

I look forward to the pics of the fig tree. A dear friend gave me a Bleeding Heart when my mother passed away and it's wonderful to see them come up every year.