Sam Van Aken, an artist and professor at Syracuse University, uses a technique called “chip grafting” to create hybridized trees that each bear 40 different varieties of “stone fruits,” or fruits with pits.

Van Aken says he became fascinated with the idea as a boy growing up on a farm.

“When I’d seen it done as a child it was Dr. Seuss and Frankenstein and just about everything fantastic,” he said in a Tedx Manhattan talk last year.  

Now a new National Geographic video about Van Aken (embedded below) shows his project coming to, well, fruition.

Van Aken considers his otherworldly trees artwork. He creates elaborate timelines of when the different varieties blossom, which allows him to “sculpt” how the trees flower and fruit.

The trees are part of his ongoing project called “Tree of 40 Fruit,” which began seven years ago. But it’s only now, years later, that the contemporary artist believes many of his initial hybrids are coming into their peak blossoms and fruits, as he describes in the new video by National Geographic.