Different growth but no graft site?

[Suziebun]

Can anyone tell me what is happening with this shrub tree? Its possibly a Lilac. Over the past two years its noticeably started to grow two different leaves and is now dropping those different leaves first.
THe different growth is all coming from the same trunk and there is no sign of any grafting.

Any ideas most welcome.

[Nicos]

Are you able to take a closer photo of the green leaves to help ID side?…then of a few fallen from the other side?

[rary]

If you are unhappy with the shrub you should cut off the part you dont like, if the shrub dies you wont be losing anything of value if its not what you want, though it might be a good idea toget some cuttings off it before you do anything to it

[Snoop Puss]

Are you sure the graft isn't buried below ground level?

[Suziebun]

Sorry for the massive delay. I have finally taken some pictures of the miss matched leaves on this shrub tree. Any ideas whats going on with it would be most appreciated.

Many thanks.

[Suziebun]

Please can anyone help with this?

[Snoop Puss]

If all the pale leaves that have dropped are on one trunk, I suspect that trunk is essentially a sucker, growing from rootstock below a graft that is invisible to you because it is buried underground.

ameno, ChingfordHarry, S.W, do you have any views?

[ChingfordHarry]

Hi

It looks to me as if the two stems are both coming out of the ground, so I think Snoop Puss is right. If the two stems came from the interesting variety (or clone), they should be the same, but I don't think this would happen if the graft union hadn't been buried; since the shrub is thought to be a lilac, in normal circumstances the graft union should be above ground.

"Mansplaining" bit about grafts follows -

Grafting is done for two basic reasons (as I understand it) - (i) to propagate a particular clone you're interested in, and (ii) to also control the vigour of the grafted variety.

For (i), you don't need to worry if the graft union is above the ground or below it, because it doesn't matter too much if your clone forms its own roots.

For (ii), you keep the union far enough above the ground so that your clone can't put any roots into the soil and it has to rely on the rootstock for water and nutrients - so its growth will be controlled to a large extent by the type of rootstock (but see below).

With roses, for example, from what I can gather, only (i) is important and often the graft union is buried. For fruit trees (apples, pears, plums, whatever) and a lot of flowering/foliage shrubs, (ii) is also important so the union is usually about 15cm above the ground.

Some fruit varieties can be real thugs - if you put a Bramley and almost any other apple onto the same type of rootstock, the Bramley will almost certainly be more vigorous than the other one, all else being equal (I have a Bramley and a James Grieve about 4 m apart, both the same age (about 20 -25) and on the same MM106 rootstock - the Bramley is almost twice the size of the JG). In order to moderate the vigour of the clone even more, it's become relatively normal practice to graft ~15 - 20cm of Golden Delicious onto the rootstock, then graft what you want onto the GD; from what I remember the "new" orchard of ~2300 (?) apple varieties (moved about 8-10 years ago) at the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale is all on M9 with a GD intergraft.