So I found, what appeared to be a thorny pear tree and tried to graft Asian pears on it last year, when that failed (late on and first year grafting) I tried an apple scion and it took.
So this year I tried again and went crazy with it.
The grafts on it are:
Crispen apple
Cripps Pink apple
Winner Banana apple
Apple-Pear Cross (That’s the name)
Clara Frijs pear
2 Asian pears of unknown varieties.
They’re growing great… it had straight thorns on all the 1" and under branches, I’m guessing its a rootstock or decorative seedling… but I don’t know what.
There’s a thorny crabapple that has bark and thorns like it not far away, but this one has never produced fruit or flowers.
When the rootstock has some leaves pop out on the trunk please take some photos. There are many things it could be but i’m curious what it was. Glad to hear the grafting went well. When you find rootstock feel free to take some photos. We will try to help you identify the trees and let you know what has worked for us. The grafts are growing very nice!
No fruit yet, even with the apple grafts with massive growth and 2 and a half years of growth… I’m not sure what’s up.
This pic is of two years of growth on the trunk closer to you, one season of growth for the other trunk, I’ve been away and not pruned it since 1 year of growth, mostly I tied them down, but I did prune some forks off entirely.
So these are the leaves, it was really busy when you asked and I forgot to answer but I just found these photos yesterday, and then I read your questions, coincidence? I think not.
Almost no leaves are being produced by the original trunk even after almost 3 seasons and no sprouts or suckers are growing.
I’m pretty sure that all grafted varieties survived: apples, Asian pears, Apple-Pear-Cross, and of course Clara Frijs survived.
I do think it’s originally a seedling of Bradford/Callery pear, birds are known to drop their seeds, and the neighbors have them, one close and a lot a mile away.
So, fortunately, there are not many leaves coming out of this Bradford pear seedling, assuming that is from the closest neighbor’s tree.
But here are a few more leaves popping out. The best photos of the rootstock leaves are still up there: the ones of the leaves on the root sucker that I took before grafting on to that.
The grafts are taking over virtually all the growth!
The apples are growing great.
One Asian pear is outgrowing Crispen on one side, but Winter Banana it’s outgrowing the Asian pear on the other side.
Cripp’s pink (Actually it’s supposed to be Mott’s Pink, I hope I made a mistake with the label not the Scion order) is doing great, even though it’s bark grafted and the lowest branch on the tree.
I’m pretty sure that the Apple-Pear Cross survived, and it might actually be another apple with good grafting abilities like Winter Banana and fruit that stays hard on the tree and ripens later like pears.
And I had three other apple grafts survive short term, one got broken by deer, and survived until I “fixed” it. Oops. Another was on this tree up high as an experiment as to what I could graft onto this thorny tractor-tire hazard
Now the important question:
Would you say that apples are fully graft compatible to Callery pear without an interstem, or at least generally are to their likely hybrid seedlings?
Interestingly on both side branches one graft reached the full diameter of the branch and the other graft turned into a smaller forking branch, and one was apple and one was Asian pear in each case, probably the same Asian pear, but I took those cuttings pruning from my dad’s friend’s trees that lost their labels years ago, probably not Hosui, I kept better track of that one, it’s the one that always immediately turned black and died of fireblight.
The big Apple is Winter Banana, and the small apple is a Triploid apple: Crispen (aka Mutsu).
The newest picture, mostly on this side Asian pears, on the other side Apple pear cross and Clara Frijs pear.
And below the only original leaves of the tree, my dad thankfully knew well enough to remove them without my even asking.
I’ve heard of apples growing on pear rootstock but with an interstem usually of Winter Banana. This bypasses need for interstem. So this rootstock might be special/rare?
I do not have a large amount of information on this, but no, I think this is normal for Callery pear seedlings, most of them, or most apples are compatible, winter banana and Apple-Pear Cross are both highly compatible with pears, but Crispen aka Mutsu, and Mott’s Pink (possibly actually Cripp’s Pink) don’t have any special pear properties, and unfortunately an unknown apple, perhaps Evercrisp, also was my first successful apple graft test on this tree, but it was so high up, I decided to cut the tree down low and redo it down low, especially since I have that apple grafted in dozens of branches and trees in my orchard.
Also there’s another of these seedlings that that apple and Apricot Apple were both successful on.
A deer broke the “Evercrisp”, and I cut it down to the ground and regrafted it with Apricot Apple in the end, when I left, it was growing well even after being cut back and being re grafted late in the season.
