Norway maple is aggressively invasive in the Pacific Northwest and the northeastern quadrant of America. It is no problem here though, and is actually rare. Schwedler maple is a cultivar of Norway maple that used to be more popular as a street tree in San Jose. I had been trying to grow copies for years. Besides propagating by cutting, I also tried grafting.
1. Double white angel’s trumpet is irrelevant to Schwedler maple. It belonged with the Six for last week, but with the addition of the picture of Rhody, did not fit. Omission of Rhody’s picture would have been unacceptable. The parent plant lives at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. The piece in this picture is a pruning scrap that became more new cuttings. Bloom is very fragrant!
2. Scion wood looks like a bunch of bare twigs because that is precisely what it is. This is an important bunch of bare twigs for me. It is from an elderly tree that I met in the summer of 1976.
3. The usual suspects. Norway maple is notoriously invasive elsewhere. The few cultivars that live here are both rare and seemingly sterile. However, one noncultivar tree seeded these five.
4. High bud grafting is not my style, but was likely easier on the thinner portions of trunks five and a half feet up. Besides, the straight trunks were too perfect to waste. It will look silly later.
5. Cleft grafting was also an easier option to more typical budding. Besides, I do not trust budding with such fat buds and such thin bark. I could not find rubbers, so used elastic from masks.
6. Rhody is about as relevant to Schwedler maple as the double white angel’s trumpet. Nonetheless, he is always the main attraction of my Six on Saturday. He is as uncooperative as always.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Tony Tomeo 
Seriously, I thought I had missed Rhody because he was in last weeks and wasn’t in SoS land. And then there he is! Magic. Nice to see a bit of grafting and of coure the brugmansia is gorgeous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As much as I dislike double brugmansias, this one has worked out well, and really is better than the single white brugmansia, which is not fragrant, less vigorous, sometimes rather pallid, and significantly less exciting than a creepy thriller from 1992.
LikeLike
Yeah, Rhody steals the show but the Angel’s Trumpets are beautiful also. We grow only one, which is now dead back to the base but will shoot again shortly and produce flowers in late August.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I should have gotten a better picture of the angel’s trumpet. I just got this one because the scrap was convenient. I needed to get rid of the plant that the scrap was pruned from, but did not want to discard it. It was instead relocated to another landscape. The original parent plant at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium is impressively large, and would benefit from a good pruning, since it does not freeze back there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They make a great display, very impressive plants.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The illustration for the species in the Sunset Western Garden Book a few years ago was from the specimen of ‘Charles Grimaldi’ angel’s trumpet in the garden of my colleague down south. Although I am not so keen on it, the bloom is spectacular. https://tonytomeo.com/2019/04/06/six-on-saturday-brents-garden/
LikeLike
Goodness, what a plant!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I pried the specimen on the right in the first picture from the main specimen on the left. They get so big that I must pollard them. I prefer the single white angel’s trumpet, but it is neither as vigorous, nor fragrant.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The Angels Trumpet (and Rhody) are stunning but I read they are highly poisonous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, and unfortunately, most who are poisoned by it ingest it intentionally for the hallucinogenic effects.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love the angel’s trumpets. I might try to grow some this year. Rhody is, of course, adorable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wish I had some to send to you. I could have sent bits of this one if I had not plugged them already. They normally grow like weeds, and need to be cut back about now. All the debris gets discarded because we can not plug it all as cuttings. There is a single pink and a single peach here, but they are just rooted cuttings that have not had the chance to produce any scraps. The big ‘Charles Grimaldi’ that I normally prune is hundreds of miles away, in Southern California.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the thought, but they would probably have died on the way to the UK! Plus I would’ve had to pay import tax. I shall try to grow some from seed.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, I did not consider the tax; or that they would need to be inspected.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t forget to report back on how the grafts go; aren’t maples pouring out sap when you cut them at this time of year?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Strangely, they did not bleed. In fact they are barely bleeding even now. The bigleaf maples bleed profusely if pruned now, but not the Norway maples. I am concerned about grafting them now, but the meager information I found about grafting them indicates that it should be done about now. I have tried grafting them in the past, but without success. I figured that I could graft them onto bigleaf maple, which are common here. Apparently, maples are discriminating in regard to their understock.
LikeLike
Rhody is always relevant. I’ll be interested to see how the grafting goes and the straight trunk maples develop.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am so desperate to get a copy of this Schwedler maple. I would be pleased even if only one of the five grafts is successful. If I get a single tree established here, I can get cuttings from it later. The original trees were grown from cuttings a very long time ago, since they lack a graft union. They do not grow well from cuttings, but I would not mind if I must plug a hundred cuttings to get just a few copies. I really only want a few.
In the future, these trees will look rather silly with such a high graft union, but if successful, they will serve their purpose as stock trees.
LikeLike
Good dog! Thank you for sharing these interesting grafting photos. Something I have always wanted to try, but have been to lazy/timid to undertake. I think your image of the scion wood against the background of directionally scratched paint on metal (?) is visually quite effective.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am accustomed to working with commodities that graft very easily, such as citrus, and apples. Maples are not so easy. I tried grafting the Schwedler maple to bigleaf maple, only to find that they are too discriminating for that. When I found these five Norway maples, I needed to remove them from the landscape, and was hesitant to put them somewhere else. I am aware of how invasive they can be in other regions, and, although they are not invasive anywhere else in California, the redwood forests are not like other ecosystems in California. Instead, they were perfect for understock for the Schwedler maple.
The scratched paint is on the tailgate of a Chevrolet that is as old as I am.
LikeLike
Great Rhody picture!
LikeLiked by 1 person
All pictures of Rhody are great, even the bad ones.
LikeLiked by 2 people
true
LikeLiked by 2 people