You need to go to the library, find a book about grafts and cuttings, and
read it. That is, if you are really interested.

Chuck


"Archimedes Plutonium" wrote in message
...
11 Jun 2004 17:14:16 -0700 Christopher Green wrote:

Archimedes Plutonium wrote in message
...
I am questioning an assumption. I assume that all shoots emanating
from
a grafted tree of its original rootstock is to be pruned off and
suppressed so that the graft becomes the sole plant above ground. Is
that assumption in error? Or can a tree be allowed to express itself
without the graft being exclusive expression above ground?

I wonder if there is an advantage to not cutting off all rootstock
shoots.

The problem with leaving the shoots from the rootstock (called suckers
or watersprouts) in place is that the plant will devote some of its
available energy to these rather than to the valuable top growth.

The rootstock in grafted plants is chosen to resist disease and to
support the top growth (also, particularly in the case of dwarfing
rootstock, to regulate it), not because it has any other value.

Plants on which suckers or watersprouts are allowed to persist will
produce less vegetative growth, flowers, or fruit on the top growth;
if persistently neglected, the top growth may languish, die back, or
even be lost to disease. This is particularly so with the dwarfing
rootstocks commonly used for fruit trees.

--
Chris Green

I wonder if anyone has quantified the success at which a grafted tree
lives versus the success
of a cutting. In a cutting you have no root system. In a graft you have a
root system yet a top
removed and replaced by a new top.

For example with Sunburst Honeylocust cuttings, few if any will live but
with grafts almost
100% will live.

Grafts versus cuttings should be quantifiable and linked to stem cell
quantity.

Yew trees are easy via cuttings but honeylocust are difficult so is there
a large difference in
numbers of stem cells in yew versus honeylocust?