Hello, new to this forum, so glad to have found you! We have a small orchard of about 25 fruit trees, and have had to replace them all 2 times at least 
- this year, instead of spending a fortune on trees, we purchased rootstock, learned to graft, and today planted 21 trees in buckets in the garden, to go into orchard next year. Problem is, we ordered plum rootstock at the same time, and after a 4-H event, they are mixed with antonovka, and I can't tell them apart. Can someone tell me any distinguishing characteristics of each would be? I did find a picture of the prunus americanus, but it seems to look the same. Looking forward to learning much from this forum!
Well, you might be in luck! As it happens, Antonovka is grown from seed and the roots are pretty distinctive for an apple rootstock - they have a taproot, surrounded by other smaller radial roots. As far as I know, it's the only apple rootstock that looks this way; I grafted onto several of mine onto them last year - the taproot looks a lot like a carrot; and the trunk might also be straighter than your other rootstock, as a mature tree they have a noticeably straight and vertical trunk compared to other apples. Once you kind of sort them out by roots, maybe your numbers will match up; and you might also notice that the bark is slightly different.
Good luck!
Dave
Thank you for that information, will go out and examine again! As it was, the prunus was sent from another warehouse, and I was able to tell by the difference in handling after all. When I called the nursery (Lawyers) they said that the apple would be more brown than red, but with that, I could not tell the difference- the colors were very much the same. Our 4-H group today held another whip grafting workshop- the kids dd a wonderful job.
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