Asian / European plum grafting compatibility

I misspoke Brethil, I should have said that as long as institutionalized racism still exists in various places in our country–which includes some courts, some police departments, some schools, some financial/loan institutions, etc… then it’s important to be vigilant and raise awareness–which includes not using offensive terms. I never meant to make a blanket criticism of police or civil servants, with whom I’ve worked too. And it sounds like your husband is a real hero! Take a break if you need to, but I don’t think I was saying what you think I was saying.

I think the best course of action here would seem to be to get back to growing fruit, for which I’ve never been arrested or abused by any kind of public servant. It is mother nature that generally does the abusing, but when she’s good she’s very very good. .

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Taking up that suggestion, does anyone have thoughts on the compatibility of japanese plums on chickasaw plum rootstock? The Chickasaw plums thrive here in 7b, but the fruit is usually sour and small.

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I have considered using the chickasaw as a dwarfing interstem. Looking forward to hearing the reply’s. If chickasaw is what we call wild plums it does send roots out that pop up new plants in several places. Bill

Hmmm…this is interesting. I’ve certainly heard of the Chickasaw plum…but I have no idea where or when. Apparently it grows here in Maryland as well. I wonder if the wild plums I know of here would be correctly identified as Chickasaws?
Seems as though there are a multitude of different fruit descriptions and that the seemingly most determinant trademark is narrow leaves. Wiki says they also hybridize easily which means that given any time it would be difficult at best to say “that’s a Chickasaw”.
I had always guessed that most wild plums here originated from fodder remaining from canning years ago. I know a place where a few grow (far from any housing later than 1750) and the “thorny” wiki description definitely applies, but it would also with seedling plums. of which I have two.
Does anyone know a sure-fire identifier?

I’ve got no idea, but this article from the Florida Native Plant Society says you should “look for glandular leaf tips on new leaves that form on lower branches when the plant flowers. These red or yellow tips are indicative of a Chickasaw plum.”

Why the interstem instead of just using the Chickasaw as a rootstock? To avoid the tendency to send out suckers?

The wild plums in my area spreads by root suckers but the tree size is pretty small.

Thanks for the article haldog…good read and the glandular leaf tips was exactly the thing I was looking for. Says they are difficult to distinguish even for the experts.

I’m nearly certain at this point that there are some compatibility issues with Asian plum on Euro root stock. It may be just with vigorous Asian varieties (seemingly most of them), or it may be more related to very slow growing naturally dwarfed Euro stock.

I’ve lost most of my plum grafts through breakage, or what would be better described as simply “popping” off. We’ve had no wind at all in recent days yet they are still popping. All had exhibited healthy vigorous growth and all were growing normally with well healed unions. All grafts were cleft, save for a few.
In each case it seems the butt end of the original scion grows so rapidly and simply overgrows the host, with expanding scion tissue *pushing * away from the host limb.
I had earlier lost many during windy weather, but have since cut back the growth to reduce wind resistance and also there has been no wind…nada, no climbing animals…nothing.
Here is a photo of this mornings victim and it is representative of them all.

Any thoughts…ideas, theories?

It does look like it over grew and pushed itself off. I think a bark graft might give it more room to grow. My bark grafts don’t heal over the rootstock as fast as my cleft grafts, but it might just be delaying the inevitable.

I wonder if it is related to the issue presented in this wikipedia picture. The caption states that starch accumulates in the scion because it cannot be passed back to the host plant due to imperfect union. I’m not sure if this means it’s the grafters fault for making a bad graft or the two varieties are not a good match due to differences in vigor.

It’s not complicated. The graft needs support or severely cut back.

I wonder if you could have pruned it back often enough (scion) just to slow down the vigor…although maybe long term it was doomed… who knows.

Support I can assure you has nothing to do with it. There are others that were cut back to nearly the original length of the scion. They pushed off also fruitnut.
That’s fully calloused tissue your looking at on the scion butt end in the last photo. They just didn’t join, even though vascular tissue was clearly formed and functioning plenty good.

Yeah…this one didn’t get pruned back, because to the naked eye it appeared as though callous tissue had bridged across the graft union. Also there were about 40 such grafts and also the foliage and limbs from the host tree…I simply didn’t see this one, but the others which were not lost early due to wind were cut back…in some cases to less than 6". Lost those also.
The only grafts which remain on this tree are a few Methley, which appear to be pushing off also and several Burbank I got from Danzeb…none of the Burbank seem to be having any issues whatsoever.

Meanwhile I’ve had exactly one, just 1 failure on all the apples and pears I’ve done (and it just simply died)…both this year and last.

What if you reversed it…put euros on Asian plum? should be fine in that case? Any chance at trying that or maybe that was already discussed earlier and i missed it…

AJ…that’s a good photo and it certainly seems plausible. I don’t think my technique would be an issue since they took off and grew so well for so long. I don’t think it could have been anything I done…or maybe I’m just wanting to think that…hahaha

My theory (FWIW) is that the highly vigorous Asian varieties simply way overgrew the very slow growing Euro (this one is an inordinately slow grower and very dwarfed ie fat trunk and scaffolds but very short and slow growing)

Looking at this graft, and the others that have pushed off leads me to believe that there was nothing I could have done to make them successful. The ends are all fully calloused all the way to the interior where the scion entered the cleft. Adding support or further cutting back I think would have just prolonged the inevitable. Sorta been on life support. What do you think AJ, does that sound reasonable?
It’s the only thing that seems logical to me, yet others have had success grafting Asian to Euro, unless my host tree is just particularly incompatible.

Reportedly Euro on Asian is ok…Asian on Euro, not ok. So far, at least in my experience that bit of info seems to be rooted in fact, unless it is purely a host issue or something.

The literature I’ve read has suggested that J. plum scions are compatible with E. plum trees and that incompatibility lies in the reverse combination, as I recall which seemed counter-intuitive to me if the issue was excessive vigor of the scion. These photos are very useful and it looks like the incompatibility lies in the failure of tissue of contrasting species to properly merge, in the manner of G30 to certain apple varieties.

My E. plum grafts to a Shiro J. plum are growing vigorously and seemingly well attached after the second season of growth. Only got one plum from scions though, so next year will probably tell more when the wood has to hold a full crop.

Nice photos and contribution to the discussion, btw.