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.

Matt - I did ind out a few more things but it just seems to make it ore complicated. It turns out that toka is a hybrid between P simonii. P simonii is considered " an upright variation of P salicina. On top of that all large japanese plums used in california (most of the ones used for the hybrids) are actually crossed with simonii anyways. The difference I found (and im still not 100% clear on it) is that toka is more or less a P simonii/salicina x american plum, which as you noted seems to make pollination way less clear. The main problem with P simonii is "a severe lack of pollen" which would explain why the hybrids have a hard time pollinating eachother. From the little that I can understand it seems that the hybrids arent incompatible, its just little pollen to pollinate with. I guess Toka may have more pollen which is why its recommended as a pollinator. Plum - the U of sask article states grafting the P nigra scion low so that it will help initiate proper flowering. Charlie - that is pretty much what I have seen as well. Pretty much the reason why I posted. It does seem to go a lot deeper then that when it comes to toka. All those california plums are apparently salicina x simonii, and simonii is said to just be an upright form of salicina.....

-High bush or half-high bush blueberries provide blooms, fruit, and autumn color if your part of MN has acid soil. -There are several other native Viburnums besides high bush cranberry that could be used such as V. acerifolium which likes shade or V. lentago or V. recognitum. All also have short-term spring blooms, fruit and fall color. -Aronia (chokeberry) also has blooms, berries and fall color. -Bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) has nicely scented foliage and waxy gray berries that provide early spring food for birds -Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata) has smooth green deciduous leaves and holds its bright berries on bare stems through most of the fall around here. -Crabapples might not work in your hedgerow, though I have a couple of bird-planted ones growing in quite a bit of shade, but they provide food in early spring as they thaw for robins, grouse, and cedar waxwings IME. -Pagoda dogwood also might be a bit large but has the same combination of spring flowers (small and lacy not like typical flowering dogwoods), bird-friendly fruit, and nice fall color. Several of these plants have 1 sex per plant (holly, many Viburnums, and the bayberry) so you will need to have both sexes for fruit. These are all plants that grow well for me in half-day sun, give or take a bit, but you are a bit colder and so should check hardiness. I have several of the plants already on your list, including elderberries, Techny arborvitae, Juneberry (Amalanchier), and hazelnut, some growing wild and some planted in garden areas. All are doing well.

Oh.. then you might practice first on apples this year, they take better then plums. Perhaps take a grafting course. How large is your tree? I'm thinking of top working your tree onto branches not heavier then pencil to thumb size. I also have several apricot seedlings, it will take a long time to see fruits, to speed things up and see what fruit might have you, I have taken some scions of the seedlings and top grafted to older plums, this will speed up fruit production by several years and can make the graft hardier further up the tree, especially if you have a super hardy plum. Fruit set you can have in the 2, or 3rd. year. This is a Capilano Apricot grafted to a plum seedling, fruited in the 3rd. season. There are many methods of grafting, mostly I do is bark-grafting,..see link. Here is a link that might be useful: Konrad's modified bark grafting