Subject: Student Quest-Tree Grafting

From: [email-masked] (Cory Wisnia)
Date: 23 Mar 1995 22:11:34 GMT

To whom it may concern

 Hello, my name is Ryan Rhoades, I am an 8th grader at Mendocino Middle
School, in Mendocino California. I am doing a project on the grafting and
reproduction of small trees. My investigative question is: What is the
process and the success rate for grafting and taking cuttings to reproduce
small trees? (I am particularly interested Japanese Maples.) I am doing
this project for a science class,  I have also been working very hard on a
small garden at home involving Japanese Maples. I have spent a bit of time
working in a Japanese Maple nursery, and I am very fascinated with the
trees. I really like varieties such as the Acre, Palmate, Bloodgood. My
school library is very small and has limited resources, but I have a very
nice book on the topic. I know the success rate is somewhere around 40%.  I
am curious as to why you have to graft to reproduce a type of tree instead
of just taking it's seeds. I am also interested in how you can increase the
success rate. I would really appreciate any information on this topic. If
you know sites where I could look for information, for I have the following
internet resources Turbo Gopher, WWW, Netscape, Newswatcher and E-mail,
that would also be very helpful. 

Thanks,

Ryan Rhoades
Please E-mail in care of my teacher Cory Wisina at
[email-masked]
or to me at home
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Gerald W. Roe)
Date: 25 Mar 1995 18:55:26 GMT

There are a couple of reasons to graft rather than reproduce 
maples from seeds. The first is that maples do not "come true"
from seed, that is, the plant that comes from the seed will not
necessarily look exactly like the plant that produced the seed.
This is for pretty much the same reason that you don't look ex-
actly like either of your parents: you're the result of 2 sets
of genes, not just one. To get a tree exactly like the one we
got the seeds from, we need to use just one set, so we "clone"
the tree. Now, even if we did get an attractive leaf from a 
seedling, there would be no gaurantee that, say, the roots would
be healthy and robust. Therefore, we take attractive-leafed 
trees and graft them on rootstock that is known to be robust and
disease resistant. 
   I think we have a somewhat higher success rate than you men-
tioned. One way we get this is to use a kelp spray that seems to
act as a natural fungicide and source of micronutrients. We get
the understock growing rapidly in the greenhouse before making 
the graft, then keep them inside once grafted, until the results
are known.
   If you have specific questions that I haven't touched on, 
please feel free to email me.
-- 
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