Maybe try to clip most of the leaves off and protect it from drying out until or if it takes. Some people use foil to protect it against the sun. Maybe spray it every once in a while? Somebody here more experienced than I might have some better pointers. There is an art to grafting non-dormant scions.
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it’s in the shady branch of the tree so sun shouldn’t hit it. maybe I’ll remove big leaves and wrap or wax the stem? a little further. good thinking
My apple on photinia is doing well. It should be dead. It’s in an area that is next to a forest and the tree canopy is so thick that area gets almost no light. You can also see the insect pressure. There is every kind of insect in there chewing on the leaves yet it is still alive. The pear on photinia is also doing well. Since this photinia is evergreen I’m wondering what will happen in the fall?
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all the pea and bean grafts died as expected- next year in spring I’ll start some varieties very early, so as to try a chip bud graft in possibly may.
You’ve inspired me to try grafting onto my photinia bushes next year. I was really surprised to learn how closely they are related to apples. At first glance they don’t really look like apples at all, but upon closer inspection the individual flowers do have similar structure (of course physical similarity is sometimes a very poor predictor of genetic similarity!)
I have some really old photinia hedges that I don’t love, but also don’t have the heart to remove entirely because they are very established and grow without any irrigation. Which is a miracle in my climate, we often don’t get a drop of rain for 6-8 months in a row.
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Yeah, I’ve been trying to graft avocado scions onto my Umbellularia californica tree for a couple years now because the flowers, fruit, leaves all look so damn similar that I couldn’t believe there had only been a single reported attempt to graft them almost a century ago, using just a single avocado cultivar and U. californica seedlings (never a mature bay tree). But so far at least, no luck. I’m planning to try some budding of a few cultivars this summer.
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Now I’m wondering if there’s any risk of Photinia as a rootstock producing poisonous apples/pears. Photinia itself can apparently be quite toxic:
Cyanogenic glycosides in foliage and fruits, hydrolyzed in GI tract to free cyanide (source)
I expect it would depend on how much toxin the specific Photinia produces and how mobile the toxins are within the plant vasculature.
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Upon some further reading the fact that your grafts look healthy may be a good indicator that your specific Photinia doesn’t have crazy high cyanogenic glycoside levels?
This study has shown that the graft incompatibility between pear and quince trees occurs in large part, due to the difference in the levels of [cyanogenic glycosides (CGs)] of both species. In addition, it can be suggested that when the difference between the contents of the scion and the rootstock is small (≤ 5 mg g-1), there is no effect on grafting compatibility; when the differences increase (> 5 and < 20mg g-1), an acceptable level of compatibility for the growth and development of the graft may occur but may result in the reduction of vigor at different levels. Finally, when the difference is high (≥ 20 mg g-1), in addition to the drastic reduction in vigor, there are problems of continuity in graft union, low yield, and early defoliation. (source)
I haven’t been able to find anything about cyanogenic glycoside mobility within plant tissues however. I’m not sure how much of a risk it really is, given that plenty of edible species and cultivars in the apple/pear family produce these compounds in certain parts of the plant (notably apple seeds!). But even still I might not be willing to be the guinea pig 
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They do use photinia as a rootstock for loquat in China. I have a loquat graft too and it reached a certain point and seems to have stalled after it was attacked by insects. It’s not dead but not thriving either. Maybe it needs more light? The apple is kind of a surprise.
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This is my pomegranate on crape Myrtle. I have several more I did recently. One trick I tried is to graft on new growth. The thing I wanted to test is a lot of people will cut the crape Myrtle off to a stub and then all this new growth is there within a short time. I did that on a thicker branch and when the new growth was big enough I grafted dormant scions to it. They all seem to be taking which is amazing for this time of year. I also tried a side graft with a skinny pom scion. That seems to be taking too, Some of my older grafts I did a long time ago just sat there and did nothing for a couple of months. Then all of a sudden they came alive. Others took right away. Others died. Next year I will convert all of them to frankenmyrtles. One thing I noticed about pomegranates is they don’t like soggy conditions. Crape Myrtle is much more tolerant of that. So I think this is a good combination where I live.
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Here’s “Walter Hole” avocado grafted on Umbellularia californica (a leaf of that is held behind as focus aid):
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Very cool! Keep us updated on how it performs!
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I do about a handful of these every year with different avocado cultivars, in the hope that the reported incompatibility was due to the cultivar that was used. So far they all failed both of the last two years, but I’m trying other methods like chip buds to see if it can overcome the compatibility issues.
I don’t have high hopes, though, since not even all Persea species are compatible with avocado, let alone this other genus. My main reason for wanting to try so much is how much more these fruit look like an avocado than even most of the rest of Persea species.
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I’ve thought the same about the similarities between myrtle fruit and avocados. If we could find a variety or species that is compatible with both, we’d have a possible interstem. Myrtles are so tenacious and hardy, as rootstocks they could revolutionize avocado growing.
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Unfortunately, the studies that have been done on Persea graft compatibility show that avocados aren’t even compatible with half the species in their genus, so it seems unlikely they’d have and intergeneric graft compatibility with Umbellularia californica. @JoeReal posted this chart from the main study done on Persea long ago:
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I have grafted some euro pears to buckthorn and they took
I am in a war against buckthorn
euro pears appear like they can be grafted to a number of genus of plants
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how long have they been growing for? Id be surprised if that combo has staying power but would be glad to hear otherwise!
Buckthorn is rugged alright. At least the kind that grows most here (glossy) doesnt have actual thorns.
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Hey @hobilus,
hope your summer is going well in spite of all the rain.
It was a short-lived experiment; most leafed out, and 2 had at least 12" of new growth to the point where I thought they acted just like a callery graft, but I asked Clark about it, and he said they would most likely eventually fail.
So I went back to my war on buckthorn and ripped them all out. But at least a few, at the time, looked like they were very very happy. I have too many projects as it is. And my war on buckthorn is never ending.
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ditto @rubus_chief. Your yard must be extra juicy these days. Im sure glad I live on a hill lately.
Pear seems to be about the most cosmopolitan graft wise of any species. All of the other species in that list of oddball pear rootstocks is at least in the same family- Rosaceae. I hadn’t realized this, but Rhamnaceae isnt tooooo far removed from Rosaceae. Makes sense actually thinking about the morphology of it- the fruit being a drupe. People tend to mistake them for cherries. Id think it was a streech to have it work, but the proof is definitely in the pudding, and 1 ft of new growth is nothing to sneeze at. The union could still wind up being weak but your results would seem to suggest “compatibility” at least generically. The most basic types of “incompatibility” would tend to manifest as low or no vigor. Now Im going to have to try it! We have only glossy buckthorn here. Seems you guys have common buckthorn there in the Champlain Valley. Thats what I see everywhere up in Grand Isle when we camp there. Theyre listed as separate genera now, I noticed.
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This one is still green, and even looks like it wants to take, but no real growth or much callus yet:
I did a new “Duke” avocado graft on a vigorous Umbellularia water sprout today:
One other avocado/Umbellularia graft from this year also seems to have some budswell, but only slightly:
I think that was also “Walter Hole,” but it might have been something else.
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