Foliage swapping natives?

[ACooke]

*Almost* entirely out of interest; has anyone tried or seen anyone attempt a foliage swap on any of our natives?
You see it very commonly done internationally with junipers, maples and some of the flowering varieties.

It strikes me as a possibility here with how vigorous many of our natives are; crossed with how much a lot of our species vary in foliage type - some more 'difficult', others more 'suitable'.

I guess he vigour of our trees is also an argument against bother with the tediousness of grafting a new foliage type; as is the readiness of some of our natives to kill off 'difficult' branches.

Regardless, it strikes me as an interesting question/experiment.

What got me initially thinking was that I have a Mel. Quin which has a reasonably developed trunk/some primaries but not much beyond that; and I also have a (not sure of the cultivar) beautiful highly-weeping papery-paperbark down the road from my childhood home that has foliage closer to linariifolia or something.

I highly suspect the best route would be to just enjoy the quin for what it is, a beautiful and iconic native, and take a cutting of the weeping paperbark to start from scratch.

Anyway, was curious to hear anyone had tried and/or had any luck with scion grafting etc. of our natives.

(hopefully not an eye-roller of a question)

[Ryceman3]

I think this is a potentially interesting thing to contemplate.
To be sure I have no experience with grafting natives of any kind (approach, scion or otherwise) ... but assuming it's possible and viable I could see benefit in the idea if you had a particularly interesting/unique trunk and wanted to ... say ... have it showcased by a foliage type that was available on a smaller/finer species of the same genus. The M. Quinquinervia to M. Linariifolia might be a good example of that?!
I'm not sure I see the benefit though on anything but a particularly amazing trunkline that couldn't be replicated by simply growing the smaller/finer species. A lot of natives generally grow quick given the right conditions, so growing the preferred species in the first place would be the move if you had the opportunity.
Just my initial thoughts without giving it too much time to marinade ... I'd be interested to see results from any practical attempts.

[dansai]

I have seen a few examples of weeping standards using native material. That is, a tall straight trunk with a weeping variety grafted on to it. Grevillea "Forest Rambler" and a weeping form of Banksia integrifolia are 2 examples. The Banksia was probably B. integrifolia root/trunk stock, but the grevillea would have been on another Grevillea species, possibly G. robusta as it is more tree like that shrub as many commonly grown Grevilleas are.

As for your example of the Melaleuca, I would be concerned the M. quinquenervia will continue to push new shoots as they can shoot on bare old wood and you would have 2 different foliage types on the same tree. The quin may even be stronger and it may be a constant battle.

Maybe find a younger M. quinquenervia and try to graft onto that and see how it goes?

[Ryceman3]

As for your example of the Melaleuca, I would be concerned the M. quinquenervia will continue to push new shoots as they can shoot on bare old wood and you would have 2 different foliage types on the same tree. The quin may even be stronger and it may be a constant battle.

This is an excellent point I think ... definitely something to watch.

[ACooke]

As for your example of the Melaleuca, I would be concerned the M. quinquenervia will continue to push new shoots as they can shoot on bare old wood and you would have 2 different foliage types on the same tree. The quin may even be stronger and it may be a constant battle.

Yep, my quin still readily shoots from the root base after pruning. I presume you’d have to scion graft at the point closest to the trunk for each branch, past which you wanted the new foliage and the continuously nuke anything prior to that. Sounds painful.

Silly question - a tree can’t force it’s original foliage upon a grafted branch, can’t? It’s only pre-graft that that’s possible?
For eg. If you had a trunk with no branching, on which you grafted a single branch of a differing foliage, the only place original foliage could sprout from would be the trunk and at furthest the crutch of grafted branch?

I might try a single graft of two some inconsequential areas and see if I can even get them to take; mainly out of interest.

[shibui]

Grafting has been used on quite a few natives for the nursery trade now. There are a few smaller eucs that are routinely grafted for sale. There's a good range of grafted grevilleas, usually the weeping forms on a tall G. robusta stock and I've done that a couple of times here just for the experience. Grafted Eremophilas are aslo produced. I graft difficult to grow eremophilas onto Myoporum root stock for hardiness in our garden.
There are still a lot of stock/scion combinations that have not been tried because propagation from cuttings is so easy for most of the commercially desirable plants.
I suspect that Melaleuca grafts will be relatively easy but managing shoots from below the graft is likely to be an issue as already mentioned.

[melbrackstone]

Ficus microcarpa (Port Jackson Fig) is commonly grafted onto those large bulbous "ginseng ficus" roots to give better foliage. I've grafted scions of the "crassula" variety onto a trunk that I'd cut too short and left no foliage. Two years and no shoots, so grafting fixed that problem.