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Bunya- Araucaria bidwillii grafted from mature lateral 30y/o in a pot!

9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago

Here is a picture of a Bunya (Araucaria bidwillii) I grafted from a mature lateral (from 90' up) from a large old tree about a mile from my home. I wanted to experiment to see if it would grow low & fruit within reach. Only trouble is I never planted it out & it is still in a 10 gal. pot!


It has not been watered for almost 20 years though it has a root into the ground. It can't be a very extensive root though because I dragged it to a new location only 4-5 years ago. I must plant it this winter as it deserves a chance to show its potential.......I reckon it's earned the opportunity to grow! I was originally grafting these with araucana & angustifolia scions for hardiness & longevity & this particular combination was tried on a momentary whim.

Peter

Comments (16)

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm confused by what I'm seeing (and reading). Did you initially graft a bidwillii scion onto a bidwillii rootstock?

  • 9 years ago

    Yes David, bidwillii on a bidwillii seedling, you can see the graft as a bump in the stem about level with the bumper of the old dodge. The unusualness was I took the scion from the top of a huge mature tree so I grafted mature soft foliage from up where the tree fruits in an attempt to shorten the many decades it takes a seedling to mature. The foliage you can see in the picture is soft & without any spiny tips like the low down branches. I wanted to see what would happen as plants grown from side branches of these usually never form a normal trunk & leader. I really posted this as it is amazing that it has survived abandoned & neglected in a pot without water for decades! The pot is obscured in the photo by grass & rubbish etc. Incidentally the tree this graft came from is around 6' through at the trunk!

  • 9 years ago

    Wow, ok, that makes sense now. That mother tree sounds like one whose cones could cause the oft-rumored "bunya bunya decapitation", so be careful out there LOL.

  • 9 years ago

    Well funny you should say that as when I was a kid riding my bike home from school in the 1960s I stopped under a Bunya for a rest during a hot March & a big cone hit the road right in front of my front wheel, exploding in all directions!! Needless to say I never stopped under a Bunya in the 'Fall' again!!

  • 9 years ago

    In 4-5 years, the extent of root growth might surprise you. These are active processes, even if we tend to look at trees as stationary, inactive beings.

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well I'm glad you weren't a bunya victim!

    Just as a side comment since I tend to notice odd things...funny how the background of your picture, with tall straight trunks that look like pines, deciduous brushy undergrowth, and beat up old pickup, looks like a scene from the rural US SE.

  • 9 years ago

    Yes I expect the root is maybe 1" thick & may be quite substantial. The pot is under big Pinus radiatas & the ground is dry & impoverished. What I have found is that when a potted plant is rooted into the ground the 'free' root often sustains the pot bound ones both directly & through out the whole plant so they usually function well upon planting.......I'm hoping!

  • 9 years ago

    I am smiling David.....you are quite right in that the trunks are indeed Monterey pines, the underbrush is an old apple orchard & abandoned nursery pots & abandoned Dodge......only thing you got wrong is that it's rural Aust SE.....what you can't see is the owner with a long white beard, few teeth & a tenor banjo under one arm............. all true!

  • 9 years ago

    ...I thought I heard banjo music starting up! Better run!

  • 9 years ago

    Cool. I Like the mature foliage on them. I have a couple of lateral grafts of Araucaria heterophylla 'Glauca' and A. Laubenfelsii - they make cool groundcovers.

  • 7 months ago

    a Brazilian researcher, Flávio Zaneti, found out that, in Araucaria angustifolia, scion grafts never branch out, never form trees. if you want grafted tree, you must get a sprout from the main stem. That's how they developed mini-araucaria gardens, now bearing fruit in less then 6 years from selected trees, might work with A. bidwillii. The way they do it is they nip the top of a desirable mature tree for it to branch, then they have multiple stems to harvest from.

    proffessor Zaneti explains.

  • 7 months ago
    last modified: 7 months ago

    Amusing foot note if you read back for context: l just, without a word of a lie put the banjo down to write these comments!

  • 6 months ago

    what is the appeal of A. hunsteinii? Aren't its seeds smaller than A. bidwillii and A. araucana? Have you ever tried grafting Araucarias on Pinus?

  • 6 months ago
    last modified: 6 months ago

    " Have you ever tried grafting Araucarias on Pinus? "

    That would not work. AFAIK, the only plant families where intergeneric grafting has ever worked are: Fabaceae, and Rosaceae. And in the case of the former at least, creates weird chimeric plants. Although the article on the arguably most famous one mentions a citrus graft hybrid also having been created, it is within a single genus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B_Laburnocytisus_%27Adamii%27

  • 6 months ago
    last modified: 6 months ago

    Quite right David. . . Marcos, A.hunsteinii is a beautiful tree especially when young. It has lush robust foliage & becomes the tallest tree in Araucaria so it's of ornamental & botanical interest. . . .as to grafting Araucaria on Pinus, with respect, you'd probably have more chance of grafting a human with a rabbit! Granted both are conifers as both humans & rabbits are mammals but that's as close as they get. . . (little bit of poetic licence being used for effect :) as a literal comparison gets complicated animals being individuals in a manner that plants are not) they're in completely different families & even some pines are graft incompatible with each other. There seems to be wide compatibility within Araucariaceae but it is a small family in comparison to Pinaceae (around 40spp compared with 250+, around perhaps 130 being pinus). . there's plenty of information on the subject available for the searching online. . .

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