Joe,

Try rooting cuttings from your cherry tree. Cherries, as a rule, are
easy to root. A rooted cutting will be an exact duplicate of the tree you
like.

Take a look at any book on plant propagation for advice on how to root
cherries.

--beeky

Joe Jamies wrote:

Hi there,

I have 4 small plum trees growing at home which I planted from seed,
after a few months of stratification in the refrigerator (I moved the
seeds out of the refrigerator when I saw them starting to germinate).

The plum seeds were ALL successful, but the 50 or so cherry seeds I
also put into the refrigerator did NOT. The cherry seeds are from a
very old cherry tree I have on my property, which is the LAST cherry
tree of this type in my neighbourhood (there were many years ago). The
fruit this tree produces is great, very sweet and fleshy, but I don't
know the exact type. I would really like to produce some new cherry
trees from this old one, since this old tree is rotting and some
branches have already dried up.

I was hoping to get some small cherry rootstocks to grow from the
seeds I collected, but this did not succeed as I said. So, I am
wondering if it would be possible to graft or bud the old cherry onto
the young plum rootstocks. Is it possible to combine these types of
fruit?

If not, does anyone know how else I can try to get the cherry seeds to
germinate? Or is there a way to graft the old cherry onto itself to
repair some of the drying branches? The lower half of the branches are
pretty bad, but the upper half of the tree looks OK, but it's very
hard to get to the fruit.

Thanks in advance,
Joe