Stefan Sobkowiak has talked about this. I hope I am talking about the same thing here. He says that if a seed can germinate at the spot where it will grow it would make the best possible tree. He says that the seedling would adapt to the local environment and the tap root would develop best. Sounds reasonable to me. He tried seeding an orchard this way but it wasnt a big success.

I have been planning on starting an orchard this way. I would collect local old good tasting apples and take the seeds. An interesting seed collection method could be from pressed apple juice pulp. I would inoculate the seeds with Johnson-Su compost. I thought I would seed with quite short spacings 0,5-1 meter. Most seeds wont germinate anyway I would guess. And many trees would not grow into good shape I guess. I would leave all that germinate for as long as possible to see what kind of fruit they would produce. Those that are growing well I would graft and try to make the final spacing. On the graft trees I might leave a couple lower branches to get the variety of apples the seedling produces. If the variety looks bad I would just cut the branches out. If its promising variety I could graft and copy those somewhere else.

It would be along but an interesting project. See you in 10 years I guess ????