Why Almost Every Fruit Tree You Buy Is Grafted

By Growing Home Greens Team · August 11, 2026

Plant a seed from a Honeycrisp apple and you won’t get a Honeycrisp tree. You’ll get something genetically unique, a real sibling of Honeycrisp rather than a copy of it, and there’s no way to know in advance what its fruit will taste like or how the tree will grow. That’s why nearly every fruit tree sold by a nursery is grafted rather than grown from seed.

Seeds don’t come true

Apples, and most other fruit trees, are extremely heterozygous, meaning the genes that produced a specific variety don’t reliably pass down intact through seed. A tree grown from a Honeycrisp seed is a new, unpredictable variety, not a copy. Grafting sidesteps the problem entirely: it doesn’t reproduce the tree sexually at all. It takes a cutting of actual Honeycrisp wood (the scion) and joins it to a different tree’s root system (the rootstock), so every cell above the graft union is genetically identical to the parent tree it was cut from.

What the rootstock is for

The rootstock isn’t just a stand-in root system. It’s chosen deliberately, usually for the mature size it will keep the tree at (see the separate rootstock/dwarfing article), and sometimes for disease resistance or soil adaptability the scion variety doesn’t have on its own. That’s the other reason grafting exists even for varieties that would come reasonably true from seed: it lets a grower combine one variety’s fruit with a completely different variety’s root traits.

How a graft is made

The two most common techniques for a home orchard: whip-and-tongue grafting joins a rootstock and scion of roughly the same diameter, generally pencil-thick, with matching angled cuts about 1¼ to 1½ inches long that interlock and are then tied together and sealed with grafting tape or wound dressing, done in late winter while both pieces are still dormant. Cleft grafting is used instead when the rootstock is already an established, larger trunk or limb, at least an inch in diameter, being top-worked to a different variety: the limb is cut flat, split down the center, and two wedge-shaped scion pieces are wedged into the split so their cambium layers (the thin growing layer just under the bark) line up with the rootstock’s.

The graft union, the visible bulge or scar where scion meets rootstock, stays visible on a tree for its entire life. It’s normal, not a flaw, and it’s worth knowing where it is on a young tree so mulch and soil don’t get piled up over it, which can encourage the scion to root on its own and defeat the purpose of the rootstock underneath.

Sources: Basic Grafting Techniques, Mississippi State University Extension; Whip and Tongue Grafting of Apple Trees, Iowa State University Extension.

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Why Almost Every Fruit Tree You Buy Is Grafted: A Honeycrisp seed doesn't grow into a Honeycrisp tree. Here's why fruit trees are grafted rather than grown from seed, and how a graft is made.

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