Wild black cherry seedlings for grafting cherries

Can I use Wild black cherry ‘Prunus serotina’ seedlings for grafting sour and or sweet cherries

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It seems nothing known so far is compatible. It’s mentioned as far back as the early 1800’s, at least. Serotina is a fascinating puzzle.

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I read somewhere one of the members had some long term success grafting(if I remember right), but with using interstems(something to do with american plum?).

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If you haven’t yet, take a look through this thread. @Trav did some great work testing interstem grafting on Prunus serotina.

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I think that member later said it died as the season advanced, if it is the same post. :thinking:

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I suspect if someone could create a serotina chimera it would be a successful interstem.
I’ve tried several times over the years, one reason or another (rabbit, squirrel, woodchuck, tree branch,) it never happened.

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@randyks @poncirusguy
I have one that’s survived 2 seasons already, even being grafted late in the summer the first time.
Surviving on prunus Serotina, prunus Padus, and What is apparently a fruitless Italian plum! 100% success in grafting these scions.
(I wish had tested it on buckthorn as well, that’s apparently even a great rootstock and a massive invasive)

One small problem is I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s Mirabelle Plum. It could be a cultivar or hybrid of myrobalan plum, but it’s probably Mirabelle.

It doesn’t suppress suckering at all though, but as an interstem, that might be better, because it should not sprout itself if you put a dominant variety on top.(most grafted varieties are high hormone producers).

If you’re anyway close to Auburn New York I bet you can get all the scions you could want.

The fruit is sweet ping-pong ball sized yellow and round.

I would also recommend trying hybrid rootstocks like Krymsk 5, 6 or 7 for interstems, they’re cherry hybrids, highly compatible, and Krymsk 86 is a peach-plum hybrid, and I already know one plum works on Serotina!

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Did you try Zaiger’s older hybrid rootstock as interstem on serotina? *Citation" and “Viking” I think? Might even be worth trying cherry laurel types.
And sometimes an inarch graft will succeed where other types won’t. A nurseryman told me that’s how he could propagate white oak types onto blackoak rootstock. Otherwise, no joy.

That tree I posted had 17 varieties of grafts on it, from almond to american plum and apricot, don’t worry, not alphabetically. :joy:

I didn’t try any rootstocks varieties, but by definition the popular ones will be varieties easy to graft and unlikely to reject even difficult species.
So that’s also something I researched a bit, but originally I didn’t think of asking a nursery for their tops when they do their grafting.

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I suspect that you can graft Capulin Cherry on to P. serotina, as it is closely related, if not a subspecies. Maybe P. virginiana would work as well? As for sweet/sour cherries, I am unsure. I have been trying to source some P. serotina to grow in order to experiment with.

Danny

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Do you have any references to buckthorn as a prunus rootstock? Google comes up blank. I’ve been thinking about trialing some different interstems between the cerasus subgenus, the sweet and sour cherries onto more cold hardy rootstocks. I’ve had some success with sweet cherry (P. avium) onto pin cherry (P. pensylvanica), but they’re both considered true cherries. I would like to get some sour cherries (P. cerasus) or the Romance series hybrids (mostly P. cerasus x P. fruiticosa) onto a plum, but interstems known to bridge this like Adara aren’t cold hardy here. Looking for other options, thought about dwarf russian almond (P. tenella), there was a study using it as a sweet cherry rootstock and some reports that it can graft onto plum. Padus is an interesting option, but it’s closely related to choke cherry, which doesn’t graft onto much aside from P. americana.

Re: " asking a nursery for their tops when they do their grafting." this is where I’m getting plenty of scion material this spring after I’m done bench grafting I save all of the tops from western sand cherry, mustang, canada and american wild plum.

Thanks for the info on Pin Cherry this is how I started doing this actually, but then I couldn’t find any pin cherries.

I probably mixed up blackthorn Prunus spinosa (a great rootstock for dwarfing and cold) and buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica, which may be possible for grafting goumi or seaberry, but that also is a stretch.

So somewhere I posted the Prunus Padus that I grafted, only 3 grafts, topworked:
Mirabelle plum survived and thrived, the only downside is that it didn’t suppress the Padus from sending out new shoots.

And I have a Russian almond, I think the second one died, and I remember they could be used as peach or plum rootstocks.

The apricot (poor material) died.
And the plum or peach also died.

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