Based on what I see with my apple/pear unions I agree. The ones I have that look like they will fail appear to be similar to the posted pictures. The ones that have survived 4-5 years look totally different. Bill
As much as I wanted this to work they appear to me to be incompatible. There might be a few varieties that work and could be used as inter-stems. Sorry about your loss. Bill
@Appleseed70 The faster growth of the asian plum could compound the problem, but I don’t think it is the whole issue. The wikipedia photo made me think there was a good connection between xylem, but a poor to nonexistent connection between phloem. Hence the buildup on the scion side while the host side fails to grow. Given that you did many grafts with the same result, I’m inclined to think that is incompatibility issue rather than your grafting skills.
It would be nice to know the details of the incompatibility. I always imagined incompatibility to be when one doesn’t recognize the other and simply seals off the cambium area at the graft site as if it is a wound. However, partial compatibility is puzzling.
I agree with Bill, it looks like the particular varieties you have are incompatible. I have half a dozen Jap. plums grafted to Euro plum stocks that are all doing fine many years later - I never saw a union like that. But on those cross-species grafts it is often the case that viability depends on the particular varieties to some degree. This spring I tried to do one of these grafts and the scions started growing but faded in a few weeks; it could have been incompatibility of that particular combination (Laroda on Rosy Gage).
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Just as G30 is compatible with MOST apple varieties it seems.
It might be important to note that the host tree was supposed to be a Damson. I posted photos of it back on GW and a lot of folks said it didn’t look like Damson. Although the fruit certainly resembled Damson, I have to agree it didn’t really look exactly like most photos I had seen. Also the fruit was nasty, absolutely sickeningly sweet to a degree unimaginable. We tried to make jam out of it and it smelled so bad we just tossed out the cooked plums. I decided it must be a seedling and was of no value at all, hence the top working project.
I read some time ago that Damson was particularly hard to graft to for some reason. Seems there is some type of genetic distinction among them. I don’t know whether any of that was true, plus I’m dubious of this tree even being a Damson, or some type of one.
Further compounding the mystery is the fact that this occurred with many grafts of multiple varieties grafted at different times and although all were cleft there were some small technique variances.
Varieties attempted that failed (all in the same or similar way) include:
Methley (the worst, quickly overgrew the host)
Toka
Flavor Supreme
Dapple Dandy
Earli Magic
Kuban Komet
Satsuma
I’m thinking there were a few others I cannot remember right now.
There are three grafts of Burbank that seem to look normal with good unions (none have failed so far) and a few others growing ok, but they are varieties that have already previously failed and they too appear to be headed towards the same fate.
I’m totally puzzled.
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I did that this year with a cleft graft. Looks good so far. Time will tell.
Some day I may try euro plums again and i’ll graft them over to plums…i wonder how they would do on a wild plum? I have a tree that looks to be more wild plum then Alderman (it was an alderman seedling)…
I think someone here on the forum (cannot remember who) is doing just that. I’d like to hear their report on them. I was for some reason actually thinking it was you warm.
I should update my comments concerning grafting a lot of various Euro plums, J-plums, pluots, and apricots to my seedling peach tree. I reported that numerous grafts leafed out last spring after grafting. Now it’s mid-spring again here, a year later, and I’m seeing some problems, mostly with the euro plums. Most of the euro plums that I grafted to my seedling peach are having trouble. The Mirabelles, Green Gages, and Coe’s Golden Drops, have almost all failed to wake up and leaf out. The major exception is Italian prune–all three grafts of it have survived and one is COVERED with plums! The other two, though, have a lot of blind wood and look bad. One of my green gage de Bavay scions survived, and has set two plums, but again, there’s lots of blind wood. Most of the apricot grafts have leafed out, some unevenly, and none have fruit. Losse Blenheim set one fruit but the twig it was on blackened and oozed, I’m assuming it got canker. The successes are the peaches (naturally), the very vigorous pluots–the Dapple Dandy scions have fruit on them–and the only J plum scions I grafted, 3 Golden Nectars, have fruit on them. This isn’t a big enough or controlled enough sample to draw any conclusions, but going forward, I will probably just graft J-plums and pluots to peach, and skip the euros.
As for the various grafts on my Katy apricot, the pluots look good, and Flavor Supreme has some fruit, but the Coe’s Golden Drop scion, which had leafed out a bit last year, is dead.
If any of you out there have updates on how your plum grafts are doing—especially euro on J-plum, and J-plum on euro, please chime in!
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So, re: Mirabelle de Nancy (Prunus Domestica Syriaca) onto a purple-leaf cherry plum (Prunus Cerasifera), did you get any action on these grafts? I just planted a Black Republican cherry tree today, and I cut off the top (I’m still too new at this to do that with out some serious wincing). Included in the top was the main stem of about 18" of probably two year old wood, and two foot-long branches of probably last year’s wood. All this is more or less still dormant, and I’m thinking of trying to graft one of the branches onto a purple-leaved Prunus Cerasifera that is down the road aways. I found your post and thought I’d check your progress.
Sounds like you had great success Lizzy. For me, Japanese on Euro has amounted to a grand total of 3 varieties and several grafts of each which were successful (well, sort of). I forget how many total plum grafts I done, but it was in the 60ish range. Of those, about 10 or less are surviving today, all look healthy, but all have odd looking callous tissue and I think ultimately most will fail.
Those Japanese that survived grafting to Euro Damson hosts were Methley, it has some that probably survived just due to the sheer numbers grafted, Burbank, and Satsuma. Of these varieties the only one which exhibited zero failures was Burbank.
More than 90% took, and grew rapidly, but popped off as the Asian overgrew the slower Euro as documented above.
I suspect at this point that this is mainly related to an oddball strain of euro, as others have reported good success.
The failures may also not so much be related to the more obvious Asian / euro clash as it is to a very slow growing, ill suited euro, in comparison with some rather fast growing Asian varieties…I dunno.
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Hi Seedy,
All of last year’s graft attempts on my cerasifera failed except for the Hesse Weinberger plumcot. I cleft grafted a tiny twig of that and it grew gangbusters. I don’t know if the failure with Nancy mirabelle, et al, had to do with incompatibility issues or whether the grafts were performed under less-than-ideal conditions (hot dry spell).
The cerasifera has a few watersprouts remaining, and I plan to try apricot grafts on those in the coming weeks…
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So how you could work around that is use Italian Prune as an interstem…although that adds another step …but i’d imagine all the Euro plums that failed to take on peach would take on that. Possibility?
I have a large Puget Gold apricot with at least 10 varieties grafted to it now…and i’ve noticed the peaches don’t like it, so i’m going to try some interstems (probably Krymsk or prunus americana)…
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Hadn’t thought of the interstem thing, thanks!
Hello Lezzy
European plum is incompatible on Japanese maintaining compatibility reverse. I advise you to avoid problems use you as a pattern almonds. On many farms are using hybrid almond x peach, but there are some European varieties that are incompatible with these hybrids as the Queen Claudia Ollin and the Green, and others that have very low compatibility, such as Martin, and the only ones with perfect compatibility They are the president and the Queen claudia Chambourcy.
a greeting
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On this subject, I still see no problems with my Euro grafts on a Shiro J. plum. They grew very vigorously last year and are coming in strong this one with clean unions. Couldn’t understand why J’s on Euro are supposed to be OK but not E’s on J’s- that is entirely counterintuitive because J’s are the more vigorous.
If the E’s on J. continue to thrive this year I will consider the literature probably inaccurate as this is the third year and some visible problem would probably manifest itself by the end of this season. There are so many different genes involved with varying varieties that there may be no hard rules.
Damson is distinctly different from other E. plums, for example.
Last years graft of Yakima (E plum) on Methley (Japanese/American cross) grew so well I pruned it back in summer and winter. This spring it leafted about a week after Methley and looks good but it’s only starting year two.
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That sounds about right. My only concern is mixing the two on one tree. It seems the Asian plums grow 4x faster than the Euros when on the same tree. Of course, those trees were young. Maybe a mature Asian plum tree that has reached steady-state is more manageable for adding Euro grafts. For young trees, I think I will keep my Asian multigrafts and Euro multigrafts separate from now on.
Good point about the relative tree age. My Shiro is at least 20 years old and a mature tree.