From the Topic Heading: "Hi, can you use wild black cherry (P. Serotina) or choke cherry (P. Virginiana) as rootstock for commercial cherry varieties?" Ten years ago I tried grafting cherry and plum to P. Virginiana demisa. The truth is that plum works better than cherry. One of my successful plums has been fruiting for several years and still pushing lots of growth. All grafting was performed in my wooded P. Virginiana lot consisting of what is thought of as sibling seedlings rather than an underground generated population consisting of clones. One of (so called plum grafted on a selaction) was inserted as a side graft @ 4 foot above the ground of the tree. In and of itself is likely P. V. demisa due to it being a lot on the NE backdrop of Mt. Ranier where in mapping that the range of wild (sub-culture) could theoretcally exist. If I were to select some of any lower branches below the 4 foot and graft them to other species types (ie virginiana, padus, possibly serotina) then it should work; unless like in Konrad's case, the fruits end up smaller than normal. For me in as far as I could tell from the small fruited wild plum I was using the limatation I would doubt be ever recognized. My guess is that you conditionally can graft P. Virginiana to plums and amur cherry to cherry. Maybe even amur cherry can work with plums for little reasons that I mistakenly grafted wild apricot on amur as apparent by the shape of the leaf and they grew with great intensity that way the whole growing season, before manually taking them out. Another guess is that I think the problem Konrad brought up about smaller fruits is true because I read a report on the small fruiting Pyrus Betulafolia, and that it influences smaller pear fruiting to pears, although not always. When I started out these experiments my ending goal (since Padus is ferel in Fairbanks Alaska) was to find fruits that would graft to Prunus Padus. Of itself Padus being the close European synonym of our P. Virginiana ecotypes, also being graft compatible. For now padus and virginiana prove that it "is" possible "only" with plums. note: Through experiments by others -Virginiana and Padus to each other are recipricol graft compatibles.

hey any of the foo foo dogwood are questionable in my z5 .... in my experience anyway ... the riversii beech is very slow growing very dark .... and very nice ... you know my feelings on the tricolor beech ... purple plum is nice color.. if you can ignore all its other problems .... ya know.. frankly.. your quest for a perfect year round tree is near impossible .. IMHO ...almost all trees have their glory season .. and then for one reason or another.. start declining ... i am having a hard time with your demand that it be perfect and glorious the entire season.. everything i have.. that you list.. looks ratty sooner or later ... except maybe the copper beech ... but even that tends to have a dark color that is variable by year ... your collection should be large enough now.. that you should become a little more zen in your approach .... and plant things that have a 'season' .. and when it looks ratty.. you have others plants.. with other seasons ... e.g. should i get rid of all my iris.. because they only bloom for a week or two.. and look crumby the rest of the summer.. NOT!!! ... so why would trees or shrub choice be any different ???? ken

So I'm guessing they 7a is not hardy enough? And sam, yes I see it but I don't see one in my current weeping cherry. Well I don't quite remember if my prunus mume was double flowering or single flowering(I'll have to look next spring). And it barely fruits yet. It is about 18 feet tall now and last year we got like 2-3 fruits and this year none. Maybe because we didn't prune it at all. And the fruit is called ume in Japan and is very very bitter and astringent and isn't meant to be eaten raw. It's often consumed as umeboshi(pickled plums) or mixing the fruit in sake(Japanese alcohol). The fruit is no more than like 2 inches big and is green and fuzzy. I don't really have a pic of the full tree but you can see the trunk and some of its leaves in the previous thread I posted. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/4105676/is-my-japanese-plum-tree-dying

Below is a prunus that I simply cannot ID -- one problem is the difficulty getting across the stream. But it ain't black or pin cherry -- blooms way too early. Isn't serviceberry either -- leaves are coming out w/the flowers, unlike serviceberry. I wish it would produce fruit, but it doesn't -- not a single berry. Alittle over 15 ft tall in fairly deep shade when the forest leafs out: