One of the uncommon edible berries that we grow is sea buckthorn – Hippophae rhamnoides which should not be confused with the common buckthorn – Rhamnus cathartica which is quite invasive. As with many of the uncommon fruits and berries that we grow, we discovered this one in a Charles Nardozzi column, Unusual Edible Berries. We liked that it was extremely hardy, was a nitrogen fixer and was very high in vitamin C. It is also lethally thorny so when we discovered a thornless variety, Harvest Moon, we decided to buy some bushes. That’s when we found out that there are male and female plants and you don’t know what you’ve got for a number of years. We bought our plants from DNAGardens who, at the time, were propagating using a technique known as tissue culturing so we knew that we had male and female plants. What I didn’t know at the time was that it is very difficult to propagate sea buckthorn by either softwood or hardwood cuttings.
But a single line in Michael Dirr’s The Reference Manual of Wood Plant Propagation suggested a possible propagation technique: This species suckers profusely; a good indication that it will regenerate from root pieces. I’ve not seen any suckering on our plants but I figured it was worth a try. So I carefully uncovered roots on both the male and female plants and cut off two of the small roots from each, potted them up in Pro-Mix BX and waited. Eleven days later one of the male roots had a tiny bit of green.
By April 30, this little nub of a shoot was 1 ½” tall.
And that second male cutting was showing a trace of green.
Neither of the female cuttings are showing any green but they may yet surprise given the performance of the second male root. And it’s not that important since we have 5 female plants and 2 male plants. We now have 4 male plants which greatly reduces the impact of one of the male plants dying. And we now have another propagation tool at our disposal.
Hmmm, what other of our trees and shrubs have I seen suckers on? Hazelnut, mulberry, red maple, wild apples. Perhaps any tree or shrub that can be stooled can also be propagated from root cuttings? Stay tuned.
Nice.
Thank you. I’ve just started poking around looking for info. There’s not much although Dirr has a couple of quite detailed pages in which he mentions a publication called The Propagator. A bit of digging led me to the International Plant Propagators’ Society. Searching their Pubhort proceedings archive for root cuttings gave me 10 pages of hits with 10 articles to a page. Membership is steep at US155 for a year. Sigh!!!!!!!!! But there are abstracts.
I am going to try it – my 10year old tree just got blown over by the gales we had and looks very sorry for itself, half in and half out of the ground. No idea whether its male or female. My little birds now will have to find somewhere else to feed. I will try root and softwood cuttings, wish me luck
Eve,
It’s definitely worth a try. Look for small roots in close to the main trunk rather than root tips. Use a sterile potting mix such as ProMix BX. I didn’t put the pot in a plastic bag so I don’t know if that would help or hinder. You have to be patient. My male cuttings showed green shoots on April 13 while the female cuttings taken at the same time did not show shoots until May 12. I suspect that the best time to try this technique is in the spring just as plants are breaking their winter dormancy. All of the re-growth energy stored up in the roots through the winter is directed into pushing out new shoots. In your case, you don’t have any choice but to proceed with what you have. Good luck. Let us know how you make out.
Mike
Great thinking, thanks
i found this pagr search for buckthorn grafting
Salut Nicollas,
As soon as I went to your webiste, I remembered your fantastic database – http://www.permaculture.eu.org/permaflorae/. And then I remembered that back in February of 2012, I’d made a donation to encourage you to develop a Linux version.
I see that your permaculture efforts have progressed a long way since then. Well done.
Regards,
Mike
You might consider using your male plants for TEA. The leaves make a delicious and nutritious tea, now showing up in natural foods markets (and costing a pretty penny too).
Thanks for the information. Why the male plant?