Southern US nurserymen have recently began creating crazy grafts like Sequoiadendron on Metasequoia. It may eventually fail years down the road, but I'm told they have taken for now. I've seen small plants with my own eyes. (Odd though, that they would bother, because I don't think it's going to solve the climate adaptability problems in the same way as grafting on Abies firma does for the fir genus, but, whatever!) Could, for example, a larch be grafted onto a pine? I'm tempted to try it all the same, to preserve my best larch clone so far. Eastern white pine is guaranteed to grow around here, but no larch exists, yet (until I improve the genus with decades of cross breeding!) that makes a sensible rootstock choice. Of the Larix kaempferi and Larix × marschlinsii I've tried over the years, only 2 out of almost 20 survived to maturity (coning). The rest died of root rot. Oops, I now remember resin saying Larches are actually closest to Pseudotsuga. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinaceae#Phylogeny Well, both white pines and douglas firs are available as cheap seedling from forestry companies in the US. So maybe I'll try both this winter.
And indeed, larch is graft-compatible with douglas-fir, I've seen it done. But I'd think not with pine, they're distant in their relationship. I've not heard of any reports of graft-compatibility between Abies, Cedrus, or Tsuga (all in the subfamily Abietoideae), but it would be interesting to see what happens with those combinations.
Yeah, douglas fir isn't ideal, but it grows around here as long as it has well drained soil. There's a huge one in the next county over in Maryland, and more than a few in the adjacent counties of PA. (Chester and Lancaster) I might still order the white pine seedlings to try to graft the incredible droopy P. wallichiana I posted about elsewhere. Thanks for confirming that grafts of that combo have actually been made.
