Grafted Pinus pinea peony won't bloom? A succulent expert tells you why

Let me start with the grafted Shandong pine needles I bought last year. Last year I bought 50 Shandong grafted plants through a forum. Because of the bumpy express delivery, they suffered internal damage that wasn't visible at first. After a while, many of the graft junctions rotted and turned to mush, and in the end only 3 survived, while another 5 survived through a second grafting. So for hobbyists who want to buy grafted plants and root them down as soon as they arrive, I think the success rate may be a bit low. My advice is to grow them for a year after they arrive, and try rooting them down once they are strong. Freshly arrived grafted plants are very fragile, and because of that fragility the odds of successful rooting are even lower.

The second of last year's surviving pine needles, the one that bloomed already has many buds, and another one was given to a neighbor.

There is also the question of why pine needles cannot bloom.

To answer this question, you first have to understand the juvenility of plants.

I studied fruit trees, so I will use fruit trees as an example.

The life cycle of the individual development of a seedling fruit tree includes two clearly different developmental stages, namely the juvenile stage (juvenility) (purely growing the body), and the adult stage (able to bloom and make seeds, hehehe)

The stage change of a seedling fruit tree starts from the cells of the most actively dividing meristem at the tip of the shoot, extends upward along the trunk, and gradually occurs and accumulates stage development substances. What does that mean? It means that the higher the organ is on a seedling tree, the deeper its stage development and the greater its stage age.

To put it simply, when a seedling fruit tree develops to the adult stage, only the white part at the upper part of the trunk is in the adult stage, the base of the trunk is still in the juvenile stage, and the middle part of the tree is in the transition stage.

In fruit tree production, most seedlings are obtained through grafting or cuttings. The scions are all collected from the outer edge of the canopy, so they bloom and fruit early too. Shoots sprouting from the lower part (juvenility) are never used, otherwise you would wait forever for them to bloom and fruit.

Therefore, if you graft using side shoots of Pinus pinea peony that emerge from the base of the graft, those side shoots are still in the juvenile stage, so of course they bloom slowly. If you don't believe it, just wait a few more years and try (manual side-eye laugh)

So if you want grafted pine needles to bloom and fruit sooner, you still have to use buds from the top to graft, so they bloom faster and mature earlier.

If you don't believe it, look at these 5 plants used in last year's second grafting, the ones taken from higher up, blooming vigorously (I went out to play on May 1st and had no time to collect seeds, let me cry for a while)

Having said so much, this is just one person's opinion. Whether this is really the reason still needs time and testing by the broad community of hobbyists.