There are records of the Choke Cherry, Prunus virginiana,[52] and of the Rum, or wild Black Cherry, Prunus serotina, having been used as stocks but these long-bunch, or racemose, cherries are so distantly related to the short-bunch, or fascicled, orchard cherries that it would seem that their use would be desirable only under great stress.
In Japan a horticultural variety of Prunus pseudocerasus is used as a stock. Of this cherry for this purpose, Professor Yugo Hoshino of the Tohoku Imperial University at Sapporo, Japan, writes as follows:
"You wish to know about the cherry stocks used in this country. It is very rare to use our common wild cherry as a stock for European cherries. In Hokkaido (Yozo Island), we commonly use the seedlings of European Sweet and Sour Cherries as stocks. But in the northern part of Japan proper (Main Island), it is a common practice to graft European cherries on a special kind of our cherry. This cherry has particular characters which fit it for propagation; namely, it roots very easily either from cuttings or by layering (mound). Its botanical position is not certain, but it is probable that it is a cultural variety of Pseudocerasus, especially bred for stock purposes. It is grown by nurserymen only and called Dai-Sakura. (Dai means stock: Sakura means cherry.) It has a somewhat dwarfing influence on cions and hastens their fruiting age."
This stock ought to be tried in America if, indeed, it is not already under cultivation from introductions made by the United States Department of Agriculture.
These are but a few of many cherries that have been or might be tried as stocks for orchard varieties. There are many species of cherries more closely related to the cultivated edible sorts than the Mahaleb. Many of the cherries from Asia, not now known to growers, will eventually find their way to America; a few have already been introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture; some of them can undoubtedly be used as stocks and from them we may hope to find a better stock than either the Mazzard or Mahaleb.
Cherries are now grown almost wholly as budded trees but they can be more or less readily root-grafted, depending upon the variety. Under some circumstances it might be profitable to propagate them by grafting. Usually it is necessary to use a whole root and to graft at the crown of the stock. Budd recommends this practice for Iowa, using Mazzard stock but with the expectation that the cion will take root and eventually the tree will stand on its own roots.[53] We cannot believe, however, that grafting can ever take the place of budding as a nursery practice or that it can be profitably used except in very exceptional cases.
Buds in propagating are usually taken from nursery stock, a practice of decades, and there is no wearing out of varieties. Old varieties have lost none of the characters accredited to them a century, or several centuries, ago by pomological writers. Nor does it seem to matter, in respect to trueness to type, whether the buds be taken from a vigorous, young stripling, a mature tree in the heyday of life or some struggling, lichen-covered ancient—all alike reproduce the variety. The hypothesis that fruit-trees degenerate or, on the other hand, that they may be improved by bud-selection, finds no substantiation in this fruit. There seems to be no limit to the number of times its varieties can be propagated true to type from buds.
CHERRY CLIMATES AND CHERRY SOILS
Climate and soil have been the chief determinants of location for cherry-growing in New York. Both Sweet Cherries and Sour Cherries are profoundly influenced by the natural environment in which they are grown—Sweet Cherries rather more so than any other fruit, either climate or soil dictating whether they may or may not be grown.
The Sour Cherry is at home in a great variety of climates, the vagaries of weather affecting it but little. It is probably the hardiest to cold, in some of its varieties at least, of all our tree fruits, thriving almost to the Arctic Circle and from there southward, in some of its forms, quite to the limits of the Temperate Zone. The blossoming season is relatively late so that fruit-setting is seldom prevented by spring frosts. Yet, even with this hardy fruit, it is necessary to take thought of heat and cold in growing commercial crops; for spring frosts may wither the bloom or summer heat and wind blast the crop if the orchard site be not well selected as regards local weather.