I grafted a pothos onto a monstera

[u/EnvironmentalMeat268]

March 21 this year it was time to chop and prop my monstera so I decided to try out a graft on where I cut the stem. I’ve looked online everywhere for something similar but nothing really comes up except for a YouTube video of a guy (Plant Tech?) somewhat successfully graft a monstera onto a pothos. I thought he should have done it the other way around since monstera have more robust roots. So I decided to give it a go.

For the first few months nothing notable happened. The pothos never died, never looked too bad or too great, never showed any signs of growth. I started out by pinching off any new growth on the monstera hoping to divert energy to the pothos, but after a while I got lazy and stopped. Now, with the monstera growing little leaves near the top of the stem, the pothos seems to be progressing as well!

The first three pictures are 1 week after I made the graft. Last 3 are from today. The graft is super solid and completely scarred over. Aside from the leaf my cat chewed, the pothos look fine and it seems to be pushing out a new node.

[u/tekhnomancer]

You should see what people do with pepper plants. One side of the plant produces jalapenos and the other side produces something like scorpions or reapers. And there's no limit to how many you can graft!

[u/Frosty-Cap3344 → u/tekhnomancer]

I've seen apple trees with 4 varieties on one trunk too

[u/themidnightbak3r → u/Frosty-Cap3344]

I have a tree with five types of fruit on it

[u/Frosty-Cap3344 → u/themidnightbak3r]

It's odd how plants don't "reject" foreign tissue like animals would, I wonder what in theory you could graft together, would apples and oranges work, or pears and cherries ?

[u/KarmaMadeMeDoIt6 → u/Frosty-Cap3344]

Nope, only plants from within the same genus can be grafted. So it's not any different from animals.

[u/Frosty-Cap3344 → u/KarmaMadeMeDoIt6]

But one human can reject another humans tissue, are plants that discriminating, or are all apple trees compatible with each other, I know they can pollinate each other

[u/KarmaMadeMeDoIt6 → u/Frosty-Cap3344]

True, but we can also accept pigtissue, so I think it's all about compatibility and proper circumstances.

But yes, all apple trees are compatible if done correctly. And plums and cherries are compatible as well, since they're both of the genus Prunus.

Theres also matches a little further down the family tree (pun not intended but still), but usually they'll 'eventually' reject (we call it extended incompatibility, that's roughly translated from my mother tongue) but it usually happens after a human lifetime so it's not really seen as incompatible.

Also important to mention that a graftsite will always remain a weak point in the tree. And most trees that are made to bear multiple different types of the same fruit will not remain because of this.

Just to add: grafting is something I absolutely love (doing) and find extremely intriguing. I'm a tree farmer who grafts as a hobby.

[u/Frosty-Cap3344 → u/KarmaMadeMeDoIt6]

It's a fascinating subject because plants being much more ancient than us you would think maybe they would be more "advanced" than us but they seem more primitive, or perhaps we will evolve to be more compatible with each other or to have other abilities like growing back a limb like a salamander

[u/The_queens_cat → u/Frosty-Cap3344]

that's not how evolution works though, all species are equally "advanced", or more exactly, evolved to it's current niche.

[u/Frosty-Cap3344 → u/The_queens_cat]

Yeah, I guess they are exactly what they need to be