Pearls from Percy

General Discussion
1

Perusing back issues of the RHA newsletter often turns up some old gems. Here’s one from Percy Wright who was one of the more colorful members of the RHA ‘back in the day’.

Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 1972

"I’d like to describe a method of getting plants to form own roots which has been successful for Mr. W. L. Herr for many years, a method of his own devising which has been called the reverse-graft. It consists of uniting the lower end of the scion with the lower end of the portion of root. That is, the root-piece is turned upside down. The whole is planted deep, so that only the top bud of the scion piece shows above the soil.

“The result of this procedure is that the rooting hormones that would normally travel down the root-piece to stimulate root growth at the tip now travel upward, enter the scion piece at its base and stimulates it to produce roots. The root piece is unhappy with its reverse position and, after it has induced the scion piece to make own roost, soon fails. The new plant is an own-root plant of the scion’s variety.”

It seems like a lot of work to go through, especially considering that rooting hormone was readily available at the local nursery. Could there be more to it than that? Anybody ever tried this?

2

Wow, that sounds interesting. Hmmm. It reminds me a little bit of grafting some of the special tree peonies and maybe intersectionals on herbaceous peony roots. It sounds like the goal is to have it nurse along the hard to root scion long enough for it to go own root in the long run because of some incompatibilities. Perhaps this is a way to induce some incompatibility over the long run that otherwise wouldn’t be there and help with propagation. Even with rooting powder it seems that some difficult to root roses are still difficult. Maybe this is a way to get own root ‘Austrian Copper’ and other challenging ones.