I'm looking at Trees at the moment for my garden.

I saw an Oak with a Silver Birch rootstock at a Nottinghamshire Garden
Centre and was wondering if anyone can fill me in with info on a rootstock
of this nature, the growth changes etc...

I asked at the centre and they did not give much info apart from a reduction
in size.

I've had very little success in finding info about this on the web.

Thanks in advance,

Swiss

"Swiss Tony" d3toiande
wrote in message ...
I'm looking at Trees at the moment for my garden.

I saw an Oak with a Silver Birch rootstock at a Nottinghamshire Garden
Centre and was wondering if anyone can fill me in with info on a rootstock
of this nature, the growth changes etc...

I asked at the centre and they did not give much info apart from a
reduction
in size.

I've had very little success in finding info about this on the web.

Thanks in advance,

Swiss




You see Paul, trying to graft an Oak onto a Silver Birch rootstock,
is like trying to make love to a beautiful woman. When she can only
speak Outer Mongolian, you have to present her father with a gift
of 15 sheep before you can even take her on a first date, and all 9
of her brothers insist on following you about everywhere.

Allegedly.


michael adams

....

--
..
"michael adams" wrote in message
...

"Swiss Tony" d3toiande
wrote in message ...
I'm looking at Trees at the moment for my garden.

I saw an Oak with a Silver Birch rootstock at a Nottinghamshire Garden
Centre and was wondering if anyone can fill me in with info on a
rootstock
of this nature, the growth changes etc...

I asked at the centre and they did not give much info apart from a
reduction
in size.

I've had very little success in finding info about this on the web.

Thanks in advance,

Swiss




You see Paul, trying to graft an Oak onto a Silver Birch rootstock,
is like trying to make love to a beautiful woman. When she can only
speak Outer Mongolian, you have to present her father with a gift
of 15 sheep before you can even take her on a first date, and all 9
of her brothers insist on following you about everywhere.

Allegedly.


michael adams



Not impossible then ;-)?

"Mike" wrote in message
...


--
.
"michael adams" wrote in message
...

"Swiss Tony"
d3toiande
wrote in message ...
I'm looking at Trees at the moment for my garden.

I saw an Oak with a Silver Birch rootstock at a Nottinghamshire Garden
Centre and was wondering if anyone can fill me in with info on a
rootstock
of this nature, the growth changes etc...

I asked at the centre and they did not give much info apart from a
reduction
in size.

I've had very little success in finding info about this on the web.

Thanks in advance,

Swiss




You see Paul, trying to graft an Oak onto a Silver Birch rootstock,
is like trying to make love to a beautiful woman. When she can only
speak Outer Mongolian, you have to present her father with a gift
of 15 sheep before you can even take her on a first date, and all 9
of her brothers insist on following you about everywhere.

Allegedly.


michael adams



Not impossible then ;-)?

.....

Well...after her 9 brothers had finished with you, you'd probably
be needing a graft of your own.

There's a customer outside, looking at the Blue Mercedes Paul.....


michael adams

....

In article ,
Dave Poole wrote:
On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 23:29:23 -0000, "Swiss Tony"
nd3toiande wrote:

I saw an Oak with a Silver Birch rootstock at a Nottinghamshire Garden
Centre and was wondering if anyone can fill me in with info on a rootstock
of this nature, the growth changes etc...
I asked at the centre and they did not give much info apart from a reduction
in size.

Unless I've overlooked some monumentally ground-breaking developments
in recent years, I'm sure you've been misled. An oak grafted on to a
silver birch root-stock would be the horticultural equivalent of
transplanting a lion's head onto a bear's body - ie. impossible
without continuous chemical intervention to prevent tissue rejection.
As with transplants in mammals, a successful graft can only take place
when both components are compatible and genetically close.

Grrk. A nice analogy, but stretched to the point that it has been
damaged beyond repair. The imunological mechanisms of the mammals
and vascular plants are wildly different.

That doesn't negate your point that it is highly implausible, of
course, nor that even grafting an oak onto a beech would be a damn
fool idea (from a horticulural perspective). As every decent book
says, any tree that can be grown from seed should be, with a mere
handful of exceptions. Even the grafting of fruit trees is kept
within the genus (sometimes tribe), and even then can be a problem.

A grafted oak is a demented idea.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In message , Dave Poole
writes

The oak (Quercus) is a member of the Fagacaea and related to Beech
(Fagus) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea). On the other hand, Silver
Birch (Betula) is the principal member of the Betulaceae and most
closely related to the hornbeams (Carpinus), hazels (Corylus) and
alders (Alnus). You have to 'climb' the classification tables as far
back as the super-order (Juglandanea) before oaks and birches come
together and even then they are remote from each other. In ordinary
language, this means that any relationship they once shared is very
distant indeed.

Come the latest classification (APG) oaks and birches (and walnuts) are
in the same order - Fagales. (But the APG classification tends to larger
families and orders - for example Primulales and Theales are subsumed
into Ericales - so the two taxa may well be much the same. According to
a 1997 paper birches are closer to walnuts that to oaks.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
In message , Dave Poole
writes

The oak (Quercus) is a member of the Fagacaea and related to Beech
(Fagus) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea). On the other hand, Silver
Birch (Betula) is the principal member of the Betulaceae and most
closely related to the hornbeams (Carpinus), hazels (Corylus) and
alders (Alnus). You have to 'climb' the classification tables as far
back as the super-order (Juglandanea) before oaks and birches come
together and even then they are remote from each other. In ordinary
language, this means that any relationship they once shared is very
distant indeed.

Come the latest classification (APG) oaks and birches (and walnuts) are
in the same order - Fagales. (But the APG classification tends to larger
families and orders - for example Primulales and Theales are subsumed
into Ericales - so the two taxa may well be much the same. According to
a 1997 paper birches are closer to walnuts that to oaks.

Given the methodology that many or most of those papers use, their
results are extremely unreliable. This can be demonstrated by the
fact that two, equally respected, people often use the same methods
on two equivalent sets of data and get incompatible (and not just
different) results.

I did ask how the APG classification was produced, and I am afraid
that the answer was a lot of hand waving using the results of the
current (broken) methodology. Doubtless most of it is correct, but
doubtless a fair amount is seriously wrong.

Oh, and in case I haven't posted this before, I looked at the
seminal book by some German, and it was statistically sound (if
INCREDIBLY tedious) - the fault is in its interpreters, the ghastly
computer programs, sloppy journals and cladistic dogmatism.

[ To take one simple example - basing a dichotomy on a single gene
is incredibly error prone, for at least half a dozen biological and
statistical reasons. Yet many of those classifications and most
of those programs seem to work like that. ]


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.