Background: Before I was born my late grandfather grew and grafted a golden walnut tree and a black walnut tree together. The tree is very healthy and is well over 15 feet tall, it fruits yearly and the walnuts are lovely. I am going off to college soon and my parents are considering moving. I want to preserve the work my grandpa did.

Question: If I wanted to grow an identical tree from a grafted tree would I have to take cuttings from the two sides of the tree and then graft them together in order to regrow the same tree?

If your grandfather grafted the golden walnut into the black walnut, the black walnut is the rootstock.

But if you want a tree identical to your grandfather's, you would have to take cuttings from both halves of your grandfather's walnut tree and graft them onto a walnut rootstock.

Thank you! That is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.

by both 'halves' you mean the branches, and the roots, correct?

Frillylily said:by both 'halves' you mean the branches, and the roots, correct?

I mean a cutting from the Black Walnut side and another cutting from the Golden Walnut side grafted onto a third walnut rootstock. I suggested taking a cutting from the original black walnut, even though it is a black walnut, because of the age of the tree.

Plants, all plants, are evolving slowly and the originals no longer look like what we have today. If the OP wants that original black walnut, they will have to taking a cutting of it from that tree.

I was thinking he grafted a tree to different root stock, so the roots and the trunk/branches are ea different. I didn't realize there was a third involved. well shows what I know

I suspect Vallatus' grandfater used only two trees and the black walnut part of the tree is also the rootstock. The golden walnut was grafted in. It could be that Grandfather's origunal intension was to create a grafted golden walnut tree but, over the years, the black walnut that he used for rootstock was allowed to grow also.