Back in July last year I made a couple of test interspecies gardenia grafts.
It was a test to see if an interspecies (between species) graft would work. I'd read somewhere that interspecies grafting was good for about a 50% success rate. Interspecies grafting is regulalry used however to develop bonsai - to change the leaf size of a rootstock plant to one that is more desirable for bonsai, for example.
I chose the gardenias because I had a few Gardenia augusta stumps that I'd pulled from the garden. Some of them are a nice size for bonsai but the leaf size is more trouble than it's worth, although I'm sure they would reduce down. I'm looking to develop small trees and so want reliably smaller leaves.
The species that will give me just that is Gardenia radicans, the prostrate variety. I have some of these growing in the garden too so struck a few cuttings and made a couple of test grafts.
A couple of weeks ago I separated the donor scion plant and the grafted piece has been surviving quite nicely - enough to call it a success at this point.
This is one of them. You can see the grafted section of radicans on the left hand branch.
Here's a close-up. As you see I used a simple but effective approach graft. At this point I've left the tail there so the graft is obvious but that need to be trimmed off.
This is another one of my stumps. Now that the test has confirmed the proposition I'll get to it and put two or three radicans grafts on it.
Here's one of the little radicans ready to use. Note the plant is growing at the edge of the pot to make the approach graft more accessible. This particular plant will be good for two grafts at once.
So if you aren't or haven't used grafting on your bonsai it is very easy, foolproof, and valuable for all sorts of development goals.
It was a test to see if an interspecies (between species) graft would work. I'd read somewhere that interspecies grafting was good for about a 50% success rate. Interspecies grafting is regulalry used however to develop bonsai - to change the leaf size of a rootstock plant to one that is more desirable for bonsai, for example.
I chose the gardenias because I had a few Gardenia augusta stumps that I'd pulled from the garden. Some of them are a nice size for bonsai but the leaf size is more trouble than it's worth, although I'm sure they would reduce down. I'm looking to develop small trees and so want reliably smaller leaves.
The species that will give me just that is Gardenia radicans, the prostrate variety. I have some of these growing in the garden too so struck a few cuttings and made a couple of test grafts.
A couple of weeks ago I separated the donor scion plant and the grafted piece has been surviving quite nicely - enough to call it a success at this point.
So if you aren't or haven't used grafting on your bonsai it is very easy, foolproof, and valuable for all sorts of development goals.
Do you have any resources that you use specifically for "interspecies" bonsai grafts? Not really easy to know what kind of combinations might work. For example I have a shrub that I wanted to graft to a Futura Ficus tree and wonder how that might work out for me. I also wanted to point out that one more use for inter-species bonsai experiments may actually open trees up for indoor growth where before it was impossible with their current roots or tops.
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