I would have dipped the distal end in wax or coated it with cut paste and put it in the fridge in damp sand or Turface until all the trees were dormant. Then, I would have buried it in the garden or beds. In spring, after the frost is out of the ground, I would have dug it up and either potted or planted it. Your tree will push foliage now, but it won't get mature enough to offer a return on the trees energy outlay, so the tree will wake up in spring with much lower energy reserves than if you had held off on rooting it. That may not be a big problem, because there are few trees with more genetic vigor than a willow, but it's not just vigor that comes into play. Vitality is also a key issue. I probably would have rooted it in bonsai soil, too. Here is something I wrote about rooting in water vs rooting in a solid, well-aerated medium. Again though, the trees natural level of vigor may sail in to save the day: Though roots form readily and often seemingly more quickly on many plants propagated in water, the roots produced are quite different from those produced in a soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite - screened Turface - calcined DE - seed starting mix, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher percentage of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of inter-cellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). Aerenchyma tissue is filled with airy compartments. It usually forms in already rooted plants as a result of highly selective cell death and dissolution in the root cortex in response to hypoxic (airless - low O2 levels) conditions in the rhizosphere (root zone). There are 2 types of aerenchymous tissue. One type is formed by cell differentiation and subsequent collapse, and the other type is formed by cell separation without collapse ( as in water-rooted plants). In both cases, the long continuous air spaces allow diffusion of oxygen (and probably ethylene) from shoots to roots that would normally be unavailable to plants with roots growing in hypoxic media. In fresh cuttings placed in water, aerenchymous tissue forms due to the same hypoxic conditions w/o cell death & dissolution. Note too, that under hypoxic conditions, ethylene is necessary for aerenchyma to form. This parallels the fact that low oxygen concentrations, as found in water rooting, generally stimulate trees and other plants to produce ethylene. For a long while it was believed that high levels of ethylene stimulate adventitious root formation, but lots of recent research proves the reverse to be true. Under hypoxic conditions, like submergence in water, ethylene actually slows down adventitious root formation and elongation. If you wish to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably best not to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The brittle "water-formedâ roots often break during transplant & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The effect is equivalent to beginning the cutting process over again with a cutting in which vitality has likely been reduced. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in soil, the cuttings in soil will always (for an extremely high percentage of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a soil medium for the reasons outlined above. Al

The low graft just means it will never get to be a very large tree at all. And you don't want to do any pruning at this time. Let the tree establish and develop. You should remove any shoots that appear below the graft and any top shoots that are growing in an unusual, outward or non-weeping pattern. But leave the lower branches/shoots in place for the time being as they help with establishment and trunk development. After a few years in the ground, you can gradually remove them from the the lowest point up to where the canopy really starts to develop. Not to rain on your parade but you should be aware that weeping flowering cherries - in fact, most flowering cherries - tend to be problematic trees in the PNW. Our climate seems to generate a lot of disease issues and weeping cherries/flowering cherries tend to have the lion's share. Keep on top of any problems, watch for rootstock shoots and enjoy your little tree for as long as it looks good and remains in good health.

Perhaps I should have said "container", rather than "pot". Either word, your tree is growing on a NYC roof, and not in an actual meadow. That you are able to keep other, putatively more sensitive, trees thriving is great. As you may have gathered from the number of recent posts about cherry trees, weeping or otherwise, many people have difficulties with them. It may be that something damaged the bark, and sap wept out and solidified, and there is no disease involved. It is possible that your tree acquired a borer - does it look like the sap solidified from a small hole? It is possible that your tree does not have gummosis - all you can do at this point is wait and see. Keep an eye on it, and if there looks to be something else wrong, then post again. That the soil was sterile when you planted implies that if your tree has gummosis, then it came from the nursery - I don't know the incubation period well enough to say for sure. But, I am sure your trees are visited by birds and insects, so one of them could also have brought some disease in on feet, feathers or through droppings.

I think the habit of the tree looks fine as well. I don't have a weeping cherry, but I do have a couple crab apples whose labels described them as weeping. They certainly didn't look like so many of the typical weeping cherry trees, and their initial growth on the youngest branches were also more upright. I got to reading up on the habits of those cultivars and found out they are better described as 'pendulous' and I really like their presentation so much better than the severely weeping trees. As their branches grow, the weight of the branch eventually bends them over in a most pleasing and novel way and it's so much more natural than the box store items everyone else seems to be growing. The only pruning I've done on them is to remove some crossing branches and open up the canopy a bit to the sun. They've been installed maybe fifteen years now down by the little spring pond, and just keep getting prettier in their habit. Both are in bloom now and I stand at my kitchen window and soak them i as I'm working.