Several years ago I grafted a piece of aronia to a hawthorn tree that has since become a frankenstein tree. It has all sorts of stuff grafted to it (even cotoneaster and a Lithuanian sorbus, both of which fruited this year). I think the aronia has been on at least 3 seasons, and the graft looks very good.
What is quite interesting to me is that today I noticed that it still had a full crop of lovely berries hanging! No leaves, but maybe a half-pound of berries. I tasted a few and they were just fine. No shriveling, just plump shiney berries.
I have the exact same genotype aronia in my garden on its own roots whose berries dried up and either fell off or are mummies, months ago. What I am observing grafted to hawthorn is probably a rootstock effect.
Interesting eh?
Thanks for the interest Jafar.
One other thing I noticed as well, and forgot to post in the opening post: I have an ornamental Hawthorn (Carriere Hawthorn) grafted both to the frankenstein hawthorn tree and a pear tree (roots are really quince). Both grafts look just peachy. The hawthorn fruit on the pear tree is still hanging, but getting dissolved in the rain, breaking down. However, the fruit on the frankenstein hawthorn is intact and looks marvelous. No deterioration in that fruit. Odd. Must be another rootstock effect.
Just the other day I bumped into a Hudson Golden Gem apple graft I had nearly forgotten about. It was kinda getting overgrown by the mother stock. I see that in 3 seasons of growth it is a total of around 15 inches long, and has several fruiting spurs on it. The graft union looked pretty decent too. I will clear some of that shading foliage away from it so it can get some sunlight. I fully expect it to have fruit on it next year.
Oh, it is grafted to photinia.
Plumfun, you are cutting edge!
Is photinia even related to pome fruits?
By the way, you can call the carriere hawthorn ornamental, which I agree it is, but it's the only hawthorn that I actually enjoy eating. Not much else you can eat off the tree in January. I did order some seeds of the related Mexican tejocote hawthorn and azarole hawthorn from the National Clonal Germplasm Repository (how's that for a nice sounding name?) Price:Free. I hope to graft them to my carriere hawthorn, which I grafted to Washington hawthorn, which birds gave me as rootstock.
John S
PDX OR
Hi John,
Carriere is okay, but I found another kind last February with fruit still in good condition. The berries were about as large as Bing cherries too. Ate quite a few, they tasted more or less like rosehips. I consider it a good rosehip substitute considering that they only have 2 large seeds each, the rest being meat. Rosehips are a PITA.
Got that specific hawthorn grafted to the frankenstein tree too.
Am planning to graft rosehips to the hawthorn this coming spring, just for kicks. Should take.
Just checked my aronia grafted to hawthorn today. Many berries are gone, and I am thinking birds are eating them. Most of the rest look intact and shiny still. A minority are cracked. I doubt there will be any left by mid-December.
Edit December 25: There are still a few shiny berries left on the aronia attached to hawthorn. The birds flew off with many, but missed some. Perhaps a cage of some sort would prevent this.
This aronia hasn't had leaves for months.
John, you are as welcome to the scion of Hawthorn as you were last year!
I took one for you last week. There is about 20 buds for you to play with. You could entirely bark graft a 7 inch diameter hawthorn stump with this if you used 2 bud scions every 2 inches around the stump.
Maybe I can give it to you at the scion exchange?
More updates on effects of rootstocks:
Today I noticed that a particular apple that grafts to hawthorn still has all its leaves. I tugged at them, thinking they might be ready to fall off. Nope. They are still very tightly attatched.
That same exact apple genotype, but on apple rootstock, has already lost all its leaves.
Must be another rootstock effect!
If you can find a semi dwarf type of Hawthorne, it would be a great rootstock for Medlar. The native hawthorne works but is prone to a lot of thorny suckers.
Would like to find a less bushy form of Hawthorne to use.
I did also graft Bosc Pear onto Mtn. Ash. It works but not very well, and I can see that the Pear graft is not happy.
Would be interesting to find out what other native trees are good rootstock materials.
Sure would be cool if Alder worked. A nitrogen fixing apple tree.
Wonder if Medlar would go on Pear Rootstock?
Aronia would probably work for medlar. The problem with pear on aronia is that aronia is really a bush, so something small, like crabapple, shipova, medlar is going to work better than a giant fruit like apple, pear, quince. The large fruit will be lying all the way over on the ground and may break the scion graft.
Aronia should work great for mountain ash. I just made a juice with mountain ash, orange juice, and mint, and it wiped out all of my arthritis pain. I put the mountain ash in the blender and used it uncooked. The quince did the same thing fresh. Aronia helped but wasn't as powerful.
Most hawthorns are naturally semi-dwarf trees. The black Douglas hawthorn is native, but not particularly tasty. I prefer the carriere hawthorn. Medlar should work on pear rootstock, but usually pear is not put on pear rootstock, because it's a giant tree. Usually people use quince, which is slow growing, but naturally dwarf to semi-dwarf.
John S
PDX OR
Very interesting info there John.
I am in the process of putting Carriere hawthorn back on its own roots. The top portion is awesome, I assume the roots will be just as awesome. I wonder if they sucker?
I grafted pear to cotoneaster last spring. No results yet in the fruit department, hence lack of mention till now. I am halfway expecting the scion to force the roots to become pearlike. I don't know what I am basing that on, but it is intuitive. It made about 15 inches of growth in one season (half sun and a young, weedy cotoneaster). Haven't even taken the tape off the graft union to see how happy the graft is. Will do that in spring most likely.
Maybe I am factoring in the young stock, half sun and thinking the thing would have grown twice as much in full sun.
I understand that there is complex interplay between roots and scions.
[quote="plumfun":b5i836zt]
I grafted pear to cotoneaster last spring. No results yet in the fruit department, hence lack of mention till now. I am halfway expecting the scion to force the roots to become pearlike. I don't know what I am basing that on, but it is intuitive. It made about 15 inches of growth in one season (half sun and a young, weedy cotoneaster). Haven't even taken the tape off the graft union to see how happy the graft is. Will do that in spring most likely.[/quote:b5i836zt]
That particular pear/contoneaster is dead dead dead. Grew happy for a season but is not coming back for another try. I wonder how that works?
And the Carriere hawthorn grafted to an apple tree has expired, not gonna come back another year. It fruited last year and seemed happy. Maybe some of these grafts only work well in the tropics where there is no winter to kill them.
So, I finally did graft mountain ash onto aronia. The aronia is such a great rootstock. Just take a stick and put it in the ground. The next year it is a plant. I think I have 3 and they took quite vigorously. Since mountain ash has gone feral around here, I want to plant some of these quick fruiting bushes out and harvest the berries. I need to find an inconspicuous place where i could get away with it. This is a new version of guerrila grafting. I don't have time to wait 8 years for a mountain ash seed to grow into a tree.
I mentioned earlier that my shipova has grafted it onto aronia. It has fruited already, while the tree aronia is slow as molasses. I hope to be eating shipova fruit in a few months!
John S
PDX OR
I did the black currant, thinking it was in the rose family. Boy these wide grafts are few and far between. The extreme exception to the rule.
Grafts, with vascular connections beween the scion and the rootstock, were successfully made using white sweet clover, Metilotus alba (Leguminosae) the scion, and sunflower, Helianthus annnuus (Compositae) as the rootstock. Cleft grafting was used ... The scion continued growth with normal vigor for more than five months. -- Plant Propagation Principles and Practices 7th edition, Hartmann & Kester, page 437, Grafting Between Families
Vicia faba on Helianthus annuus rootstock (Kollmann 1992)
The union of Cactus and Capparis was made possible with the use of cleft grafting technique at the Biological Science Research Laboratory of Alcorn State University, Mississippi. LINK
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