Adam's Apples

Sow Carolina Gold rice and you'll generally grow Carolina Gold, the same as the parent. You can save some for seed if you like. Sow seeds from a Honeycrisp apple and, with a little sun and rain, you'll grow apple trees, but not Honeycrisps. Unlike rice, apples do not breed true; apple varieties must be propagated by grafting scionwood onto rootstock .

From time to time I am flattered by questions from readers who assume I know more than I do, especially about growing apples. (My expertise lies in the eating part of the process.) Thanks to some other readers, who do know a thing or two, I am pleased to pass on the following sources for scionwood, also know as budwood, for older varieties.

Plant a seed from your favorite apple and you will eventually grow...something else. Apples are extremely heterozygous and do not breed true. Instead apple trees are propagated by grafting—by stitching together a cutting of the desired fruit onto a living stump. (Kevin Hauser has this short video detailing one such grafting technique.) Farmers and nurseries once used any old apple seedling for rootstock, but today they usually choose from rootstocks that cause the tree to bear quickly and/or for size (that is, to grow the grafted variety on dwarf or semidwarf trees). These rootstocks are similarly propagated asexually from clippings : usually some variation of sticking live rootstock clippings into dirt or other medium until they root. (Update : Kevin Hauser also documents that process on video.) Consequently your favorite apple probably grew on a single tree comprising not one but two clones. Incidentally, "Rootstock...

Though somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright, it's gray winter where I live. A good time to throw a log on the fire and curl up with, um, informative internet videos about apples. Really. I first stumbled onto one of these at Apples and Oranges , where Kevin Hauser, the blogger/nurseryman-in-chief, had made this video about bud grafting. The video is hosted at Kevin's YouTube channel with other apple videos. It's one of my favorites, making good use of the medium to show, in four action-packed minutes, how you make an apple tree by grafting budwood onto rootstock using nothing but a utility knife, a pair of clippers, and some tape. (Any tape, according to Kevin.) I didn't know how this worked. Do you? There's even theme music.