Lauri,
People started out grafting hard to root plumeria to robust seedlings as a way of saving them. Once the graft takes you have a nice growing plant without having to wait for roots to form. To graft, you cut off the top of the rootstock and attach the graft to it then wrap the wound until it heals. This is rather vague instructions but there us much info out there about grafting. Maybe someone else can explain better. Hope this helps.

Karen

Thanks Karen, That does give me information on why people graft. It's an interesting concept. I might just give it a try one of these days. Any more info from any of you would be appreciated too.
Lauri

Hey Lauri,
You can see some good pictures on the link below. It's of Luc from Florida Colors Nursery doing his grafting. He does about 4000 of these a year if I remember correctly. If you don't want to do your own graft, he does them for appox $4 each, plus S&H.

John

Here is a link that might be useful: Luc's grafting presentation

Thanks for that link John. A lot of interesting photos there. I think one of these days I'll give grafting a try, just for the fun of it. Don't know what it is about these plummies, but I love em'.
Lauri

Just did my first real graft that shows another reason to graft. In repotting my Wendy's Just Peachy last fall, I cracked a branch with four tips. I tried putting it back on and secured it with tape to see if it would heal. When I checked it a couple of days ago, it had not healed at all and was holding on by just a small amount of tissue. Instead of trying to root the branch separately, I grafted it onto a rooted Celedine. I have plenty of Celedines, but only the one Wendy's. If the graft doesn't take, I can always try rooting the piece anyway.
Mike

So I'm curious... Say for instance you graft the top part with a Peachy to a root that is a Celedine, and it grafts. What flower do you get? A Peachy Celedine?
Good luck on that graft Mike. Let us know.
Lauri

Lauri,
In Mike's case, the celedine is providing the roots and the Just Peachy ,when it blooms, will be Just Peachy.

This is as simple as I can put it. It will not change, there are people out there that have plants of many colors, as they have grafted several varieties to one root stock. The grafted portion will bloom as it did on its own roots, thus you could have a tree with one branch a Celedine, one branch Just Peachy, one branch Kauka Wilder etc.

Hope that makes sense.

Luc, at Florida Colors, does a lot of grafting and showed some of the pitfalls of grafting several varieties to a single plant. Some plumies grow faster than others, and, if you graft different varieties with different growth rates, you can wind up with a very lopsided plumeria, or, one variety will seem to take over and the other grafts will fail over time.

One other reason to graft is to preserve a plumeria that is failing, or damaged. You can graft a fairly small tip onto existing root stock, whereas if you tried to root the small tip, it would likely fail.

Mike

I understand that Mike and have heard Luc's and several others reasoning behind that. It is still done. I was just trying to explain to Lauri about the blooms you would get not being those of the root stock but those of the scion.

Wow, What an intersting concept. Thanks for that info mystwitch. And Mike too about the pitfalls and what to be careful of. Actually I had sent an ailing cutting to Luc to try and graft and save for me. Once I have more established plants I do believe I will do a bit of experimenting and see what I can come up with. A tree of many colors.
Lauri

Karen,
I know that you know. I was just trying to add some more info for Lauri. I would not discourage anyone from trying to graft multiple varieties on a single tree. After all, that is how we learned there are some pitfalls. And we can still learn which varieties seem to co-exist on the same tree.
Mike