...Back to Grafting

 

A various times I have been asked what I “plan to do” now that I have supposedly retired. Well, mentally I both plan and do not plan; but really my future is unpredictable because I've never experienced the remainder of my life before. For a while I hope to keep breathing, and if I'm able to keep up with the American average of 960 huffs per hour, 23,040 per day, 8,409,600 per year...then by the age of 80 I might take 672,768,000 breaths in my lifetime. Therefore I continue to eat green stuff, brush my teeth and pay my taxes.

Actually I'm still working part time, about 40 hours a week, and I'll continue to do so if I remain healthy and productive, and if I'm needed. My goal, though, is to help with Buchholz Nursery transition and to render myself unnecessary, the sooner the better. The new owners (MrMaple) like the arrangement because I'm the lowest paid employee on the entire staff.

I still enjoy connecting with the plants, and to really get to know them I have to see and touch them. Photography allows me to see them more intimately than most workers or casual visitors are able to do. Procuring cuttings and scions is the tactile approach, which is also dependent upon seeing them first. One learns to “read” the trees and bushes for quality shoots, and I'm trying to pass that relationship to other employees. Nothing is easy at Buchholz Nursery because we don't have fields and fields of stock trees, and we have to make sure we don't butcher a particular tree for cuttings if it's already sold and awaiting shipment in a couple of months. Money now from a happy customer or propagation for future plants is the question, but now the new owners will have to find the balance, their balance.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Larix kaempferi

At Buchholz Nursery we typically begin our winter grafting season with Metasequoia and Larix cultivars. Both genera are relatively easy to propagate with their straight scions and rootstocks, so it's a good warm up to prepare the grafter for the more difficult conifers that follow. This is the first year in a decade where I'm not cutting every scion myself, rather I'm coaching new employee Jordan to the intricacies of the process.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Little Creamy'

First, one counts the graftable rootstocks, then the scion-cutter (or manager) goes through the Master Plant List, our bible of all the species and cultivars that are on the property, to select how many of each to cut. That decision was always mine because I was the owner, the one who had to predict how many I could sell down the road. Of course I also had to first predict how many total rootstocks to raise ourselves or to buy in. It's a bit more complicated now because the new Buchholz Nursery owners (MrMaple) naturally want a say in what we are producing, where some of the successful propagants will go back to them for their mail-order business at a small one-gallon size, and the remainder will be grown a few additional years for our garden-center sales. I was happy to receive scions of a “Dawn redwood” that is new to me, Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Little Creamy', a variegated cultivar originally discovered in The Netherlands. Hopefully 'Little Creamy' will not become “Little Toasty” in Oregon's 100 F summer sun, so I'll reserve judgment on its worth until we trial it further.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Daweswood Tawny Fleece'

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Daweswood Tawny Fleece'

In addition to M.g. 'Little Creamy' we grafted M.g. 'Daweswood Tawny Fleece', a dense globose selection that originated at the Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio from a witch's broom mutation (discovered in about 2010). It was originally named 'Daweswood Arboretum WB' – a terrible name certainly – then renamed by an arboretum committee as 'Daweswood Tawny Fleece' in 2017. The new name is problematic, though, as I'd like to see anyone from that committee try to cram all of those letters onto a label that's less than billboard size. The word tawny is derived from Old French tanne, from tan meaning “pulped oak bark used to tan leather.” Indeed the foliage is a brownish orange color, but I wonder if the original broom's host is similarly colored? Hopefully 'DTF' won't revert, as many brooms are known to do, for the gardener would get fleeced if the dwarf suddenly bolted skyward.

I love to graft Metasequoia because the scions slice neatly with little effort, and one's fingers and knife don't get gummed up with pitch like with Pinus and Picea and other conifers. The scions are obvious and fast to acquire since the cultivars are deciduous; they almost call out, “cut me, cut me, cut me,” but I instruct Jordan to not fall for the sticks too skinny. Thin wood will also “take,” so go ahead and use it if you are desperate for numbers, but the fatter scions (and even two-year scionwood) will give you a year's advantage to produce a salable plant. Let's face it: horticulture is the art of kicking nature in the butt to accelerate production, and we use greenhouses, rooting hormones and vigorous rootstocks etc. to accomplish the process. Nature alone – sorry Flora – is too slow, too crooked and filled with too much disease and death to turn a profit. As I alluded to before, Metasequoia and Larix are warm-up genera, and even the beginner, with just a little guidance, can experience an impressive graft take.

Original Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Miss Grace'

Original Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Bonsai' at the Morris Arboretum

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Bonsai'

A couple of weeks ago we grafted both Metasequoia 'Bonsai' and my previous introduction 'Miss Grace' even though the cultivars are nearly identical. 'Miss Grace' originated as a floppy, prostrate witch's broom in New York, and it forms a wonderful weeping tree if staked, or a dense groundcover if not. When the similar 'Bonsai' entered the market a decade later I assumed that it had the same mutation origin, but I was soundly embarrassed to learn that 'Bonsai' was not a mutant freak, rather it was a chance seedling with the same pendulous habit when staked. I was set straight by Tony Aiello, then curator of the Morris Arboretum near Philadelphia, where the original 'Bonsai' seedling is housed. Why are we propagating both, since they basically look alike? The answer is...well, they both sell, so I let the customer be the expert. For what it's worth, I once grew a row of 'Miss Grace' next to a group of the same-aged 'Bonsai', and yes, I could detect a minor difference. One's needles – I can't remember which – were a little smaller, and the other a tiny bit more gray-blue rather than green, but the casual observer would declare them to be identical clones. It was only when a group of one was placed next to a group of the other that I could detect the minor difference.

I coached young(er) Jordan to not place the above two clones next to each other because I can see the future, the likelihood that we could/almost certainly would mix them up. We needed to place a completely different buffer in between their greenhouse location to alert the (sometimes sleepy) crew that they are different cultivars...and to focus on the labels, not on the similarity of the two propagants. Also, each clone is given a different label color to help the crew, but it takes a combination of strategies to insure cultivar integrity.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'North Light'

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'North Light'

Metasequoia 'North Light' was the designated buffer between the two similar weepers. The broad, dense upright originated as a witch's broom mutation on the comparatively unspectacular M.g. 'White Spot' at Schirrmann's Nursery in Germany. The mutation has proven to be far more garden-worthy than the mother tree. Scions were first harvested by Herr Schirrmann in about 2010 and sent to Kools Nursery in The Netherlands for propagation and possible introduction. In Europe the cultivar is named 'Schirrmann's Nordlicht', which caused me to groan at such a difficult-to-market name, and I pleaded with Kools that we shorten and translate it to 'North Light'; but to be Hoyle we also include (AKA Schirmann's Nordlicht) on all labels and invoices.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'North Light'

In any case our stock plants of M.g. 'North Light' are the first and largest in America, although I saw one equally as tall in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Bartlett Arboretum where deciduous conifers such as Metasequoia and Taxodium thrive in their summer heat. When your scion stock is smaller (between three and eight years old) 'North Light' presents the propagator with perky single shoots. The grafts all take and fill out nicely. On our older stock trees, however, we cut two-year branched shoots, and those perform just as well. The genus Metasequoia loves heat and water if grown in a lush nursery setting so we use containers much larger than with Abies or Pinus strobus...so the “Dawn redwoods” won't dry out. If the nurseryman does his job, a 'North Light' graft in December will be a salable one-gallon pot by the following summer.

Puli Dog

Larix decidua 'Puli'

Larix decidua 'Puli'

The Larix cultivars we propagate are similar to Metasequoia in that we use one-year shoots when they are available, especially for the energetic varieties. The grower can allow the weepers to spread laterally, or they can be staked into small pendulous trees. An excellent garden conifer is Larix decidua 'Puli' which displays bright green foliage in spring and summer, then turns in autumn to yellow or orange. 'Puli' originated in Hungary in the early 1970s, and in fact its name was derived from a Hungarian breed of dog that's noted for a long corded coat which resembles a mop. Imagine a mutt with dreadlocks bopping to a reggae tune.

Engelbert Kaempfer

Larix kaempferi 'Heverbeck'

Larix kaempferi 'Heverbeck'

Larix kaempferi 'Wolterdingen'

We grafted two cultivars of dwarf Larix which are indistinguishable to me without their labels: L. kaempferi 'Wolterdingen' which is of witch's broom origin, found in 1970 by Gunther Horstmann in the town of Wolterdingen, Germany; and also L. kaempferi 'Heverbeck', a witch's broom found in Heverbeck, Germany by Jorg Kohout. Larix leptolepis is the old species name for the Japanese larch* (karamatsu), but the correct botanic name, taking precedence by two years, is Larix kaempferi. When I received 'Heverbeck' years ago from Germany it was still labeled as L. leptolepis. You would think that the Germans would use the correct species name (kaempferi) since Engelbert Kaempfer was a German naturalist, physician and world traveler. The rejected name leptolepis is from Greek leptos for “slight” and lepis for “scale,” and originally was used for a genus of now extinct fish that lived in European waters during the Jurassic period.

*The common “larch” is derived from Latin “larigna,” named after the ancient settlement of Larignum in the Alps according to one source (Wikipedia). Other sources differ.

Larix kaempferi 'Peve Tunnis'

Larix kaempferi 'Peve Tunnis'

An attractive dwarf Larix is 'Peve Tunnis', another cultivar of the “Japanese larch” which was found by Piet Vergeldt of The Netherlands as a witch's broom in St. Anthonis which the locals* call St. Tunnis. Its foliage is more green than are 'Heverbeck' and 'Wolterdingen', and also 'Peve Tunnis' displays a more low, flat habit. One gripe about the larches is that they're deciduous and to some gardeners they appear “dead” for half the year, especially the full-size trees. However, 'Peve Tunnis' looks very much alive with its orange-brown lateral twigs which are studded with buds, and in spring you can imagine a bird laying its eggs on the ready-made nest.

*An inhabitant of St. Anthonis is called a “Sintunnisenaar.”

Larix kaempferi 'Twisted Sister' original witch's broom

Larix kaempferi 'Diana'

Larix kaempferi 'Twisted Sister'

Our newest Larix kaempferi witch's broom is the exciting 'Twisted Sister', and most of our grafts have gone to that cultivar this winter. Buchholz Nursery was the first to produce and introduce it, thanks to ex-employee Paul Warnick, now director of the University of Idaho Arboretum. The mutation was discovered by Paul on a Larix kaempferi 'Diana' which is noted for its contorted branchlets. The host is an interesting selection (1970) that was discovered in a German reforestation plot; the mother looks good when young, but it ultimately grows quite large and then the contorted stems are not so prominent. So far, 'Twisted Sister' solves that issue admirably, and it makes for an excellent, hardy container plant. Finally, this winter, we have planted a group out in the landscape where its dense, globose form will add great interest to the winter garden.

As mentioned earlier we begin our winter grafting season with the deciduous conifers. Not only are they a warm-up for the grafter, but the scion-cutter can get ahead quickly. Our employee, Jordan, is new to the task and he has discovered that David (the grafter) is relentless and constantly at his heels. Jordan's job will only become more challenging as we move into the season; he must speed up with scions because other projects also need attending.

When we graft deciduous conifers such as Metasequoia, Larix and Taxodium – although none of the latter this year – we keep the process as simple as possible. Therefore none of the graft unions are ever coated with a tree-seal product, nor are the new grafts enclosed in a thin-poly tent such as we do for Picea, Pinus, Abies, Cedrus, Thuja, Chamaecyparis and the like. The reason is that it is not necessary, the grafts will take just as well without the additional humidity, whereas the other conifer grafts appreciate a more sweaty enclosure. The grafting nursery, and also the green-thumb hobbyist, learn what works best in their particular situations, which may not be applicable in different environments. Basically every winter's propagation is a grand experiment where nothing is guaranteed. I picture Flora hovering above Buchholz Nursery, wishing for our success and wincing when we fail. But she has already done her part by bestowing her favours upon the earth, and we nurserymen must take it from there.