I don't mean to sound dense, but can you give me a little more detail as to what you are referring to? You lost me at 'grafted onto a rootstock'. I don't know anything about trees to begin with. I know the Cherry tree we had produced last year but is dead this year and have no clue as to why. I do know that plants just like the one pictured are growing out of the old tree at the base. The tree that died has not been cut down yet (but is scheduled to be soon) and I am wondering, based on your post, what should be done with what is growing (out of) around the base. Can you give further insight and advice please?

Thank you.

Agree...looks like a sucker from your old tree. You don't say what cherry it was, say you had a pie cherry on its own root like most Evans, then no grafting required. Sweet cherries are grafted trees, you can re- plant next spring when dormant and graft the following spring.

We have only lived here a few years and the tree was already here. I know there was some storm damage to it, but I do not know exactly what kind of Cherries it produced. I have been told that they were 'sour cherries' or 'cherries best used for pies'. What does that mean? I don't know. However, I have included some pics of the Cherry tree itself and what is growing around the base. The sapling that I included in the original post is less than 10 feet away from the base to the left of the tree.

Granny H.

Most fruit trees are grafted - a piece of the desired variety is grafted/budded onto a rootstock - may be a seedling, or more commonly, a cloned selection that has specific traits such as dwarfing, disease-resistance, etc. In most cases, the rootstock variety is not noted for producing good fruit.

What I'm seeing at the base of the tree are probably rootstock suckers. Shoots popping up 10 ft or more away could also be suckers from the rootstock, or possibly a seedling of your fruiting tree - or a random seedling courtesy of a traveling bird.

As Konrad indicated, cherries like Evans, that are usually 'on their own roots' may sucker quite some distance from the original tree - I know my Evans/Bali cherry would have suckers popping up 40 ft or more away from the original tree.

Very interesting. That makes more sense to me. But the question that comes to mind for me would be -

1. Are these seedlings worth re-planting? The tree is going to be cut down in the next few weeks and the wood used for various things. Are these seedlings worth replanting in the place where the tree was? I can't say how far down the tree will be extracted from the ground.

2. What would be the difference between the quality of what the tree produced and the quality of what would be transplanted?

Generally the rootstock variety is not worth keeping if the upper variety of the plant dies. My cherries are grafted onto Mazzard rootstock. This is considered a semi-wild variety of cherry, and if suckers are allowed to grow out from the rootstock, the leaves look noticeably different from the leaves of the rest of the tree. A sucker is a new shoot being sent out from below the graft union, generally you want to immediately trim them off to prevent them from growing. The Mazzard variety can produce edible cherries, but they are almost certainly very inferior to the regular cherry varieties. There is a reason people do not grow them.

Some advanced gardeners let the rootstock keep on growing because they can use it as the base to graft on another variety of cherry cuttings in the future. The advantage is that the rootstock already has a well established root system, so a new graft would be well situated to take off.

Although almost all fruit trees now are grafted, this does not absolutely have to be the case. Generally, however, own-root cherry trees tend to grow more vigorously, which paradoxically means that they take many more years to begin producing fruit (because the nutrients are diverted to growing the trunk and leaves). This is one of the main reasons all commercially grown cherries are grafted. Own-root cherries can also grow taller than desired, making it more difficult to pick the fruit. (There is a reason that a basket crane machine is called a "Cherry picker") Own-root cherry trees also have much thicker trunks, they grow like a "real" tree, not something like you find in an orchard, but it is very rare to ever encounter one.

Thank you all for the help. I have a much clearer understanding now of what I am dealing with. The help was very much appreciated.