I got a wild hare to give a friend an apple tree that reflected his great grandfather’s heritage as a settler in our area. The idea was to find an area heirloom that his family (might have) planted and graft a scion from it to a tree of his own.
Problem was that we needed to plant it in a Zone 3 area, so it needed to be a hardy type and probably best on a full-sized rootstock. And, there aren’t any trees anywhere nearby to provide pollen. Also, he’ll be 69 this fall. So we don’t have years to wait for it to come into bearing.
The good lady at the nursery gently steered us to a “Prunus fruticosa x Prunus cerasus ‘Juliet’” which is a Nanking cherry hybrid. We got it in the ground yesterday. He seemed more than happy, and we had a good day shifting the remains of an old disk harrow out of the way and stripping away some sod so we could plant the cherry. Lordy those old implements are heavy. But the cherry sure seems happy, and so was my friend. So all is well.