I’m hoping somebody has have tried doing this, and/or knows of someone who has.
I’ve been thinking about buying a thornless honey locust tree and seeing if I can graft some carob scions onto it. I’m perfectly happy to get honey locust pods (they sound tasty), but I really want to have carob, which is a zone 9a plant.
I’m planting carob seeds in the ground in my greenhouse too, of course, but those take years to bear fruit, and grafts might manage it in only a few years. Plus, maybe if they’re grafted to honey locusts, they’d have more cold hardiness and be able to survive in zone 7b outside of my greenhouse . . .?
Please let me know if this has a chance of working. It would be so cool to have a tree that bears fruit from both species.
I’ll defer in some measure to the voice of experience - - on that note I’m curious to hear Shane’s thoughts - - but only in some measure. The reason is I really think this ought to be possible. They’re purportedly in the same subfamily. I’ve read recently about tobacco interscions being used to graft all kinds of things, but in my mind this could just work as an unfancy intergeneric graft. I’m skeptical it would do much to help the scion overwinter unless mentor grafted.
But this is all experienceless speculation (albeit data-driven) on my part
P. S.
As an aside that might be relevant to your carob pursuits, the fruit of American basswood/linden can supposedly be used to make a chocolate substitute.
Grafting might succeed, but it would be unlikely to increase the cold hardiness of the scion. I wonder though if one could cross pollinate honey locust with carob. That might confer cold-hardiness.
Trying for an interspecies cross would definitely be cool. But first I’d have to get both species to survive all the years it’ll take them to start making fruit and seeds, so . . . first things first! (Laugh.)
@H.B, the linden fruit chocolate sounds very interesting. I’ve never heard that before. How would one go about making it?
Hmm, okay. So: harvest green, roast, grind into flour, and then you can use that flour as sort of a substitute for flour-plus-cocoa-powder in recipes?
That doesn’t seem too unreasonably difficult. The main difficulty will probably be harvesting all those seeds, because you need loads from a mature tree, which will likely mean getting up on a ladder.
I think Mentor grafting would make hybrizing easier. Especially if you take recently hybridized honeylocust seedling & do a swap scion with recently hybridized carob seedling & then hybridize that! I think it will have higher chances of success, well at least that’s how Ivan Michurin, the Russian Plant breeder would probably do it.
