Hyperorganisms
Winter Banana apple wedge grafted to Malus fusca
Northwest Greening crown grafted to Malus fusca
For the past dozen or so years, I have been performing various 'botanical re-mixing' experiments, investigating the capacity of native and naturalized plants to serve as 'scaffolding' for related species that offer higher food yields.
I am particularly interested in creating what I call hyperorganisms which are assemblages of two or more species that form a living system with characteristics of all the component parts. For example, I have grafted Bartlett Pear to wild hawthorn, which creates a hyperorganism with its own, built-in barbed wire fence which protects the delicious fruit from roving deer.
pear on hawthorn hyperorganism
Malus fusca fruit cluster
In fact, Malus fusca makes a compatible rootstock for many domesticated apples though it shows some variability from individual to individual in its willingness to play host to exotic twigs. The trees show resistance to many common apple diseases and their small size makes harvesting easy. I find the tendency to send up suckers useful, as it provides me a continuous supply of new places to graft. I have also 'top worked' several older trees, using a technique called 'crown grafting' (which is a little brutal), but more typically by wedge grafting twigs onto the ends of existing branches. These 'repurposed' trees now provide bushels of fruit on a site once unsuitable for a conventional orchard because of its seasonally waterlogged soil.
Medlar grafted to Mountain ash
Pear grafted to Hawthorn
Yet wilder and more contrasting hyperorganisms are possible! In addition to my previous example of the Bartlett Pear grafted to the hawthorn Crataegus monogyna, I've succeeded in grafting pears to Mountain ash Sorbus aucuparia. Medlars (Mespilus) also seem compatible with both the Sorbus and the Crataegus and I have one Medlar that bears heavily on a hawthorn rootstock, (see slideshow at the bottom of this page.)
Grafting can also be used to repair damaged trees. Here are a couple of images showing the 'before' and 'after' instance of an apple tree that had been split, which I then repaired using a 'bridge graft' made up of the watersprouts coming up from around the trees base. I grafted these around the split to convey sap to the crown of the tree and in a few years these watersprouts thickened and encircled the wound, effectively giving the tree a new lease on life....
Split Malus fusca trunk bridge grafted for support
Same bridge graft a few years later
Slide Show:
