Wonder if they require some heat? Harvey grows an orchard and really loves them. I took the plunge today now let’s see if I can keep it alive lol
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Yes, I made some plants on pensilvanica and they seem to be compatible fine. Two problems with pensilvanica: its stems are much thinner than rubra and I’m building the mounds around and above the grafts to force them root above the graft. Pensilvanica also sprouts a lot and I always need to remove the suckers coming from roots. I’ll be grafting on cerifera and rubra in the future.
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Marta that’s great to know thank you!
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Yeah, that’s what i was told and that’s exactly what it looked like. To me, it was a bland, bitter strawberry with a hint of dingy socks. 
maybe i was given a bad fruit as a joke 
but I’ve tried a few strawberry tree fruits and have never liked any. I’m willing to try them again before committing but if someone gives me a “delicious strawberry tree fruit” and it turns out to be gym shorts again, I’m never going to believe anyone about that fruit ever again.
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lol we have a few nice Strawberry Trees around here and I couldn’t resist trying one. Definitely wasn’t great that’s for sure. They do look very similar and must be related.
Was it gritty at all? Might have been the other “strawberry tree” Arbutus.
Might could also have been seed grown yangmei and just a lousy one.
Or, as ramv mentioned, it might be the climate, it might need good humidity and rainfall for best flavor, sort of like muscadines.
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@Marta The rootstock leaf looks a little strange here. It’s supposed to be male Yangmei to pollinate Biqi. Does it look like it could be to you? The serration on the leaf is why I’m wondering.
Sure it wasn’t an Arbutus? They have very similar looking fruit. Despite the similar looking fruit they’re actually in the blueberry and heath family, while yangmei and the rest of the Myrica genus are in the oak family and are most closely related to walnuts somehow. And of course strawberry looks similar, but it’s a rose family member. Che also like similar, but it’s in the fig and mulberry family. An older member here from California always said che was the worst fruit he’s ever had. And yet TNHunter in Tennessee says Che tastes awesome. Might be growing conditions, might be personal taste.
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Wow that’s pretty crazy to think how everything can be so closely related in the world. Thanks! Next time I walk by the trees I’ll take a picture.
I should add that Arbutus fruit is usually considered pretty mediocre or even bad. There is a species native to the West coast, on in Arizona, several on Mexico, and another in Texas, but the common European one also gets planned ornamental a lot. So the odds of you seeing an Arbutus just growing somewhere at random are pretty high, and the odds of your not looking the fruit are also very high.
Common names include strawberry tree, cain apple, and madrone.
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That’s fine. The rootstock is immature. The leaves you see these are typical for young trees. It’s grafted with mature wood, so you see the smooth edges on the leaves
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It’s a bareroot grafted dongkui, just started putting on growth. I’ve had it about 2 weeks?
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I looked into growing Yangmei a long time ago. The word back then was tons of heat was needed. I’m surprised people in California can grow them so I guess they don’t need as much heat as was once thought. I had some fruit in China many years ago and always wanted to grow them. I might actually have the heat where I am but it sounds like it will be too cold in the winter.
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How did you find the fruit to be? I haven’t had Che, Yangmei, or Arbutus Unedo yet (although I’m growing all 3) so I have no metric to go by other than they look good to me. I’d imagine some of the hardier varieties you could manage to grow with some winter protection. As mentioned the reported hardiness varies wildly
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They are delicious, in my distant memory they were something like a cherry/plum/citrus cross. This was almost 40 years ago. I doubt they will work where I am but will be happy to try them if someone else gets them to work 
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Mine (3 yr old seedlings and a grafted plant on rubra roots) do fine in regular potting soil with a pH around 6-6.5.
These aren’t quite as easy to propagate as figs, but my grafted Dongkui grows fast enough that I could have plenty of scion wood if I wasn’t trying to let it get bigger. If I were better at grafting these, I would make a bunch and undercut everyone on Ebay.
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I found this eye candy site but it will not solve your problem:
https://www.hardtofindtrees.com/product-category/yangmei/
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Micheal I saw that website and it’s full of great info about each type and beautiful pictures. But has anyone ever used them? I hate it when sellers don’t provide a telephone and address.
@scottfsmith great info thank you!
@GrapeNut thanks I agree was trying to find some local myrica to start grafting and sharing. Then again it’s best to confirm the variety first. I was able to find Pacific Wax Myrtle (M Californica) but I didn’t want to spend $70 on a 5g shrub. Can you recommend common easy to find myrica plants I can graft onto?
How many seedlings did you succeed and were they a pita? I’ve heard they can take up to a year to sprout.
I got some M. californica seedlings from Las Pilitas (they do mail order), but my only successful grafts were on a 5gal one I picked up at a local nursery. Like I think what Marta experienced with M. pennsylvanica, M. californica takes longer to thicken up than M. rubra so I found it hard to match scion and rootstock diameters.
As long as the seeds are fresh and you respect their need for stratification they are easy. I started maybe 15 seeds. All of them sprouted and have 10 surviving now. The ones that died did so for no apparent reason within the first two years. They got no special treatment. I just planted the seeds from CalMei fruit immediately after eating them, left the pots outside for the winter, and all of them came up the following February. They didn’t really seem to mind root disturbance when I separated the seedlings to pot them up individually. Until they get older their root systems seem really wimpy (just a taproot with a few thin branches), so I would have half the rootball fall off when potting them up, and they never seemed to care about that either.
I’ve found that their roots tend to head straight down and form a mat at the bottom of the pot rather than explore and fill in the upper parts. I planted my biggest seedling in the ground last fall, so we’ll see how it does. There have been nematode concerns with the imported plants from China, so I haven’t planted my Dongkui in the ground, but the roots look healthy so I might just bite the bullet and do it. Taking out my Flavor King pluot this year (too big, too much brown rot), so I have a nice sunny spot to put it.
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Mine seems to be pushing a ton of nodes out, tempted to scrape some off to force the energy more upward rather than everywhere but I will wait. Also have some seeds that were stratified in the fridge that I planted so we will see how well they germinate. My plant seems happy for now, planting it out after last threat of frost passes.
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