Happy Blizzard to Guy!

Guy's place is the epicenter of wicked weather this year. If it is going to snow as much as they say, AND you have the winds we are getting up here(25-35 MPH), that should be one doozie of a blizzard.

Guy, You had not already filled the kiddie pool and changed your long johns to a speedo and flip flops had you?

Guy:
Moss Hanging Day is April 1. I hope you didn't jump the gun because the moss will be gone with the wind.

Moss hanging day? What the heck is moss hanging day?

Is nothing sacred! I always thought the moss hanging in the trees down south was natural. Now, I guess, live oak lady and other southern belles hang the stuff like tinsel on christmas trees.

Moss Hanging Day, That's Funny!

Does that symbolize that nobody smokes in your house? After all that Spanish Moss only grows in areas with low levals of air polution...
Hmmm, What about Mistletoe infesting Day...

Several years ago I sent Guy some Spanish Moss that he asked for and told him to wait to hang it on "Moss Hanging Day", a traditional day in the South. IT IS A JOKE AND NO, WE DO NOT HANG MOSS LIKE TINSEL. However, since Katrina destroyed so much of the moss, literally blew it off the trees, we just might have a moss hanging day this year.

Yeah, thanks a lot everybody! No, the moss is still in the greenhouse. And at least this weather will slow down the buckeyes and other early trees that are trying to break bud before I can dig them. I finally get a day of rest today!!!

Guy S.

Excellent Guy!

I've been meaning to ask (someone) and now I realize it's you, Guy if you have a list of what Oaks are compatible for grafting. Is there any chance you have or know of such a list?

Many thanks,

Dax

White oak types (section Quercus) go on other white oaks, preferably those with transplantable root systems like Q. robur or Q. bicolor. Red oak types (section Lobatae or Erythrobalanus), with great risk of failure due to Peroxidase enzyme incompatibility, on other red oaks. Turkish oak types on Q. cerris or Q. castaneifolia seedling stock. Ring-cupped oaks (Cyclobalanopsis) on others of that subgenus, and golden oaks (Protobalanus) likewise, but you probably won't be trying them here in our climate. You might contact someone who knows more about the tricks, like Mark Coggeshall at the University of Missouri. It's not easy, like grafting apples or roses.

Notr to Ken: I didn't think they ever heard of speedos and flip-flops up there on the tundra where you live with the caribou and musk oxen. I thought you folks up there had 20 words for parka and 40 words for snow!

Notre to the rest of you: Moss Hanging Day is a Sacred Holiday around here -- don't mess with it! We hang moss each spring on the big tree in front of our house, and it grows about as fast as the birds can harvest it for nesting. Then the next winter, when the leaves fall, we see all these birds nests around the woods with moss growing out of them, sometimes extending down 2-3 feet from a single season of growth. Really catches some folks eyes and fills them with wonder! (Quoth local hero Abraham Lincoln: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time . . . )

Guy S.

When we used to hang tinsel on Christmas trees we had very colorful cat litter boxes. Didn't realize they were eating it so my husband has never been allowed to hang tinsel since. I think I rather like the idea of bird nests trailing moss. Sounds tranquil.

Guy pretty well outlined the compatibilities, but I'll differ with him on the ease factor - next to apples/pears, oaks are perhaps the easiest trees to graft - WAY easier than walnuts/pecans/hickories, and I've had almost no success in my feeble attempts at grafting Japanese maples.
Mark Coggeshall and Fred 'Mr. Hickory' Blankenship taught me to graft oaks(well, white oak species), and they're really pretty simple, though timing is (perhaps) of greater importance than with the pomefruits.
Mark indicated that the best time to graft oaks is just as the rootstocks are beginning to unfurl leaves - so, I try to do my grafts then - but last year, I had some scionwood I'd misplaced, and was well into June when I made my grafts, and they worked just fine.
A simple bark graft works well - behead the rootstock with a transverse snip of your secateurs. Make a vertical incision in the bark extending downward, 2 inches or so from the top of the beheaded rootstock. Prepare your scion by making a long, sloping cut in the basal end - just as you would to do a simple whip/splice graft; then, 'shave' a little bit of bark off the lateral edges of your sloping cut in order to expose a little bit of cambium tissue on the sides. Gently lift the edges of your vertical slit and slide the basal end of the scion down into the slit until the cambium at the top edge of the sloping cut is just barely above the top of the rootstock. Bind with your choice of grafting rubbers, etc. and seal with Parafilm, grafting wax, or latex grafting sealant.
I usually use a 2 or 3-bud scion. The 'experts' advise against using terminal buds, but I've used them when scionwood was in short supply and I didn't want to waste any.

T-budded some Q.michauxii buds onto Q.robur seedlings in September, last year, and while I didn't force any of them, some appear to have made it through the winter, and I'll be forcing them this spring.

Q.robur and Q.bicolor do have the reputation for transplanting easily, and if you've got ready access to them, they do make a good rootstock for most members of the white oak group. They seem to 'lose' their taprooted nature and begin developing a more lateralized root system sooner than many other oak species.
I use mostly bur oak as my rootstock - because that's what I've got the most of. It transplants OK for me - I've hand-dug - and none too gently - 6-7 ft specimens, plunked them back into a hole just barely larger than what root system I preserved, watered them in, and never gave them any further care; and they've done well.

I've not even attempted to graft any of the red/black oak group, but there is evidently at least one Q.coccinea selection that's marketed - at least in the UK - as a grafted selection.

Thanks for the information you two, I really appreciate it.

Anything is easy to graft in my opinion. It's all the same, finding that cambium layer on both parts. "Green to Green" is all that's needed and a good wrap, and some wax in the case of a deciduous graft. You can easily see the cambium when you make your first clean cut on the end of the scion so at that point, you already know how deep your knife can and cannot go. Acer palmatum is actually very, very, easy....once again, anything is if your knife is razor sharp and you're paying attention to each scion. As far as the understock, you just need to remember that the cambium is always right under the bark so you plan accordingly to get, "strong enough of a flap" containing as much cambium as possible and personally, I think the most important part of the scion to line up with the understock's cut is the outer flap of bark (with that cut of the scion.) It's all a big gust of wind anymore as it's easy to see in my mind the entire process of what is needed to be done to achieve a well-knitted graft. A greenhouse of course helps! lol But in all reality, temperatures, bringing the understock in to wake up, things of this nature, are all very simple once you know what everything needs to be at.

That Quercus coccineana cultivar is: 'Splendens'. Then again even though I thought I had to have it, I was pretty much told by the general concences that seed grown Q.coc. is just as likely to have just as good fall color as the cultivar which of course let me know that I was waisting my time searching for 'Splendens.' What a fair amount of time I spent just attempting to track that tree down in the U.S. It's not here...

Well, I appreciate the information. So far things look real easy because the only tree I want to graft really, is Quercus ‘Crimson Spire’ (hybrid of Q. robur and Q. alba) as I saw a photo of Greenthumb's/Mike's tree. It's a pretty spectacular tree.

So, I'm going to start growing a lot of Quercus coccinea seed and a lot of Quercus robur Fastigiata seed (Schumaker's) to graft that Crimson Spire.

Much appreciated for the information, it always helps to hear it from someone who knows!

Thanks again,

Dax