Anyone know if I can graft a cherry onto my folks’ chokecherry tree?
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Cberry will not graft on choke cherry in my experience. Ive tried hundreds of times.
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Have you tried grafting any other prunus onto them? I have several established trees in my yard and have been curious if plums or peaches would be compatible…
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I’m interested to know as well. i have dozens of chokecherry nearby on abandoned land. im grafting several pear scions varieties. to my 8ft. volunteer mountain ash.
I think @Lucky_P might know, among others. I think it’s been covered here before, but I don’t know for sure.
I have tried other prunus the grafts did not take.
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Clark, did you try both sweet and sour cherry scion?
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I did try two types of sour cherries and neither took in my experience. Sweet cherries i cannot recall having tried those. Im going to look for my research on those.
IIRC, the cultivated cherries(sweet, tart) will not graft onto any of the American native cherries…pin, choke, or black.
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If I remember correctly I thought that chokecherries are more closely related to plums than true cherries. I grafted 3 superior plum scions to a chokecherry bush at my previous place and all 3 took and grew vigorously but I moved away last fall so I don’t know if it survived the winter.
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Nanking cherry is more closely related to plums than to true cherries… and in my limited experience will support grafts of peach and Japanese hybrid plums…severely dwarfing for peach (at least for the one i did, many years ago)
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Here’s what I lifted from Wikipedia:
Description
It is a deciduous shrub, irregular in shape, 0.3–3 m (rarely 4 m) high and possibly somewhat wider. The bark is glabrous and copper-tinted black. The leaves are alternate, 2–7 cm long and 1–3.5 cm broad, oval to obovate, acuminate with irregularly serrate margins, rugose, dark green, pubescent above and tomentose below, with glandular petioles. The flowers are white or pink in a scarlet calyx, opening with or before the leaves in spring. They are reliably profuse, arranged in clusters on scarlet pedicels and are 1.5–2.0 cm in diameter. The fruit is a sweet but slightly tart drupe 5–12 mm (rarely to 25 mm) in diameter, scarlet, ripening in early summer, with a large seed. Though often called a “cherry” and superficially resembling them, Nanking cherry is closer related to plums than true cherries.[6] It prefers full sun and grows naturally in a variety of soils. It is drought-resistant, and cold-resistant to hardiness zone 2.[4][7][8]
Flowers
Leaves
Fruits
Pollen
Uses
The plant has long been widely cultivated throughout eastern Asia for its flowers and fruit.[4] It was introduced to the British Isles in 1870,[2] and the United States by the Arnold Arboretum in 1892.[9][10][11]
It is cultivated for a number of purposes. The fruit is edible, being an ingredient of juice, jam, and wine, and in pickled vegetables and mushrooms.[11] It is also grown as an ornamental plant, prized for its flowers and fruit, and pruned for bonsai, twin-trunk or clump shapes, or left upright.[10] It is used for dwarfing rootstock for other cherries. In Manchuria and the Midwest United States, the shrub is planted in hedgerows to provide a windbreak. Under cultivation, it flourishes in well-drained, slightly acidic soil.
Several cultivars are grown; examples include ‘Graebneriana’ (Germany), ‘Insularis’ (Japan and Korea), ‘Leucocarpa’ (Manchuria; white fruit), and ‘Spaethiana’ (Europe).[7]
You’ll see it is dwarfing rootstock for other cherries (as well as for plums, in my experience) and is, as Lucky says, more closely related to plums than to true cherries, so it’s unclear to me what “other cherries” it my be a useful rootstock for.
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@clarkinks and @rsivulka and @moose71
So based on this link - i tried on some wild chokecherry at my place in N Mich. This is after one summer - a couple of the cleft grafts took. But no idea if they’ll come back this year.
2022 Season Update - Grafting Pears and Plums to Wild Choke Cherry and – Oak Summit Nursery.
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Sadly none of it survived. I have another experiment potted up in my backyard now and will protect thru first winter. 
Yup. You guys are right. Yet another late summer failure. Italian plum on chokecherry. Next year, american plum interstem experiement.
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Try cutting square across that graft tissue, maybe you will end up with a chimera bud in spring.
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Love the idea. How would you protect over winter? Greenhouse? Indoors? Re-pot it? Hmmm
Cut through the middle? Just above? Just below?
Cut now? Or april?
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I’d wait till early spring when it’s going to push new growth. Cut through the top of the graft so you can keep cutting lower slices if the top cut does nothing. Probably wax the fresh cut each time or put in the greenhouse to keep it from drying out. Just my 2 cents! 
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Just wanted to add some results from an ongoing chokecherry grafting trial. I have stands of black chokecherry around our nursery, Prunus virginiana var melanocarpa and it’s so well adapted to our sandy soil and cold (we’re in zone 3, -40), and I have so much of it around, and I enjoy grafting and experimentation, so over the past 4 years each year I top work more of the trees to other Prunus to find out what can grow on them. I’ve made hundreds of grafts, and have around fifty as of this fall in good health. Graft aftercare has an effect, cutting back a large prunus and top working anything can make 4-5 ft of growth and can be subject to wind breakage so I try to take steps to manage vigour through more or less pruning above and below the graft, and also support like staking or tieing. Chokecherry is not as widely compatible with various prunus as american wild plum (P. americana), or canada wild plum (P. nigra) or western sandcherry (besseyi), but what I’ve found is that if you use an americana interstem then you can double work just about any other plum onto it. You can graft the interstem at the same time, or graft it and come back later and bud or graft plums onto it. I find that chokecherry trunks naturally grow as a central leader and doesn’t spread wide like a plum, and grafting onto a small whip can lead to it bending over. I try to find vigorous growing 1-2” caliper trees and top them at shoulder height, partly for deer, but it also often gives you a few good scaffold branches to graft onto. I’ve tried directly grafting about ten species of prunus to it now, including many hybrid plums, and found that most will take initially and even grow a few ft, but often aren’t compatible enough to survive the first year. There are hybrid plums that are somewhat compatible, I have 2 americana hybrids that work, one is an unnamed selection and the other is Toka, which is an unusual hybrid between americana and P. simonii the chinese apricot plum. Toka may be an acceptable interstem as well, but it grows like simonii, faster than the americana or chokecherry and within the first year or two can overgrow the rootstock, but this can work if you graft onto say a 2” tree, Toka will slow down in vigour by the time it catches up. I have several 6 ft grafts that fruited this summer, though 2 need staking, This year I’ve managed to grow out many more americana scions all on chokecherry stocks, with three numbered selections that are all very compatible, in that the union doesn’t swell and can be hard to find a year later, take rate is high 90% or more and survival into the second year is high, but the sometimes confounding factor is that I’m grafting onto unmanaged trees not curated orchard rows, with no irrigation or fertilization, so the location and condition of the stock tree has an impact, some are kinda stunted when you cut them back hard, others rebound. Toka does nearly as well but I have maybe 20% breakage if I prune the stock heavily and let the scion grow 3-4 ft with branching in the first year, the union can be more prone to breakage. I attribute that to the different growth rates or lignification, also a bark graft or modified cleft isn’t as solid as a whip & tongue or a z graft (my new preference). once a toka union is 2-3 years old and healed over I haven’t had any break, but I suspect they could need a stake. I’ve also grown out a decent stock of western sandcherry scions, as well as sandcherry hybrids, and also quite a few americana and nigra seedlings, some of those will get trimmed into scions and numbered then grafted both directly and onto interstems this spring. Prunus padus is known to be compatible, I just need to find some seeds. I’m also growing several chokecherry selections like garrington, lee red, and a yelllow fruited one. All of those will get some test grafts once I have enough material. What does this mean for the nursery trade or commercial orchards? well nothing, that’s why no one is trying it. but for the hobbyist, or for anyone with chokecherry growing around who would rather have some plums or even apricots on their roots it has some value. In a small backyard nursery context, I’m using then grafts to grow out many varieties of prunus for scion material and just as a fun experiment, but as some of the plums on americana I’ve planted seem to struggle around my property and it’s super sandy soil and in our extreme climate in southern mb (+40C to -40C), I’m beginning to see the real value in chokecherry as just a tough cold hardy and drought resistant rootstock.
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