Fruit Guides

Beginner's Guide to Fruit Tree Pollination

Ornamental Trees

5 min read

09 Dec 2024

Fruit Guides

Beginner's Guide to Fruit Tree Pollination

When you grow your own fruit tree, you’ll need to consider pollination – how and if your tree needs to be pollinated in order to produce fruit.

Read our beginner's guide below to learn everything you need to know about fruit pollination.

What's in this guide

What is fruit pollination?

Most fruit trees need to have their flowers pollinated (i.e. receive pollen from a different flower/tree) in order to successfully produce fruit. This is usually done by flying insects such as bees, beetles and wasps.

To successfully produce fruit, the pollen needs to come from another tree of the same species, but of a different variety. For instance, a Discovery Apple tree can be pollinated by a Cox’s Orange Pippin Apple tree, and vice versa, but a Discovery Apple tree can’t be pollinated by another Discovery Apple tree.

Apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees cannot cross-pollinate, so to pollinate a pear tree you’ll need another pear tree, and for a cherry tree you’ll need another cherry tree, and so on. The exception to this is apple trees and crab apple trees, which can pollinate each other.

So, to ensure your apple tree, for instance, successfully produces fruit, it should be in the vicinity of another apple tree, and both should be flowering at around the same time. This is where pollination groups come in – please see the section on pollination groups below to learn more.

Pollination groups

All fruit trees fall into one or more pollination groups.

Pollination groups are essentially pollination dates, and show which fruits are in flower at which time. To ensure a good crop of fruit, grow two or more different fruit trees from the same pollination group, or adjacent pollination group. So, an apple in group C can pollinate and be pollinated by apples in either group B, C or D, but not A, E or F, etc. In the above example, both Discovery and Cox’s Orange Pippin belong in group C, so will be in flower at the same time.

If you can only plant one fruit tree, you can choose a self-fertile variety – see the “Self-fertile fruits” section below. Alternatively you can plant a family fruit tree, which has more than one variety grafted onto the same tree.

All of this being said, pollinating bees can travel up to 2 miles, so if you live in a built-up area, you may only need one fruit tree, as chances are there will be at least one other fruit tree in an eligible pollination group growing nearby. This is especially the case for more commonly grown fruits like apples. However, the RHS recommends that for cross-pollination to be most effective, the trees should be within 18 metres of each other.

Bear in mind that some fruit varieties are sterile, or “triploid”, meaning they can’t pollinate other trees. See the “Triploid (or sterile) fruits” section below to learn more.

Self-fertile fruits

Some fruits are self-fertile. This means that they can pollinate themselves so no other tree is required for pollination. These are a good option for beginners or those with smaller gardens. Most soft fruits, such as berries and currants, are self-fertile. You’ll also find that most plum and cherry trees are self-fertile.

Some fruits are referred to as “partially self-fertile”, meaning that they can be planted alone but will yield the best results when paired with a suitable pollination partner. Fully self-fertile fruits will also yield better results when they have a pollination partner.

Cox Self-Fertile Apple Tree

Stella Cherry Tree (Self-Fertile)

Jersey Blueberry (Self-Fertile)

Triploid (or sterile) fruits

Some fruit trees are what is referred to as “triploid”. Triploid trees have sterile pollen, meaning that they cannot pollinate another apple tree. They can however be pollinated. Bramley Seedling is an example of a triploid apple tree and belongs in group C. If you choose a Bramley Seedling, you could grow it alongside Discovery. However, Discovery would not be pollinated by the sterile Bramley Seedling, so you would need a third tree, e.g. Cox’s Orange Pippin, for all trees to be sufficiently pollinated. Alternatively, you could grow Bramley Seedling alongside a self-fertile variety, which would pollinate both the Bramley Seedling and itself.

Plums, peaches and nectarines

Plum trees always flower quite early and pollination, and subsequent fruit yield, can be badly affected by a wet and cold March/April.

Peach and nectarine trees flower earlier still and the flowers can often be damaged by frost and wind, so they may need hand pollinating with a brush as there may not be sufficient insects around at this time of year. If you live in colder areas it pays to plant later flowering trees.