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["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Dr. Parmer, 

Maybe it would be good to choose a rootstock that comes fairly uniform from seed.  There is one used for the north in the US, 'Beautiful Arcade'.  I have been buying a seedling rootstock called 'Micromalus".  It is thought to be a cross of M. spectibilis and baccata.  It grows about 10 ft tall and wide, and is much less tasty to field mice than most apples.  The nice thing is that if you could locate a source of seeds, you would have much less trouble with quarantine, as there would be no dirty roots to worry about.  One warning about Micromalus, I find that about 10-20% of the Micromalus seedlings have deformed leaves,  and those trees never grow.  I don't know if it is a virus, better find that out, or if there is some kind of genetic problem with a certain % of seedlings, like for example with seedlings of Citrus trifoliata, 'Flying Dragon'.  There is very little info on the Net about Micromalus, but where you can find such info, I would ask the writer about this problem with some of the seedlings.  Mine came from Lawyers Nursery, they might know about the problem. 

    Is anyone else familiar with micromalus?  Have you noticed the plants with the deformed leaves and poor vigor?  They are quite different from the healthy seedlings.  Donna