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On Apr 9, 2006, at 12:02 PM, Jwlehman@aol.com wrote:

. . . 

I discovered that males with early bud break grafted to late bud break genotypes still broke bud early while the rest of the tree was still dormant. And likewise late bud break males were still dormant while the rest of the early breaking tree grafted to  had green shoots. The conclusion I derived at was, in persimmon early and late bud break is controlled more by the tree genetics than temperature.

For what it's worth.

Jerry

I suspect that temperature is still important, and if it had been colder, all of the cultivars would have broken bud later, but probably in the same sequence.

I've seen something similar on apples.  I have grafted a number of eating apple cultivars to a crab apple.  The tree is still mostly "crab", however.  The crab branches break but as much as a few weeks earlier than the eating apples.  Curiously, they also go dormant earlier in the fall.  The bloom time is much closer than the leaf bud break time, but the crabs are still ahead.

The crab apple is some random seedling tree, and it breaks bud and blossoms at about the same time as every other random seedling crab in the neighborhood, of which there are dozens.

Ginda