Questions on shoots/runners (Cherry)

randomguy

The house we bought 4 years ago has a nice front garden, and I have been using info from here to try to keep it on track, but am a novice gardener.

I have a question about a tree in the front garden. This is the tree, and we think it is about 40 years old. We think it is a cherry or cherry blossom.

Can anyone confirm - cherry or cherry blossom? And does it matter?

I have read on here that we should not allow runners to sprout. Is that because the rootstock might not match the tree, so you will get a wholly different tree? Or does it actually cause the original tree to die quicker? I naively thought wouldn't it be nice to be growing a natural replacement for what is an old and tired looking tree.

So I allowed two shoots/runners to grow, But now I am not even sure if they are from the tree! The first is right beside it.

The second is in a neighbouring bed; I am after realising that they don't actually look alike!

Are these from the main tree? Or something else entirely?

The final question is about a plant/weed that keeps popping up in the front. The previous owners had loads of perennials planted, so we get nice surprises every year. But I cannot work out if this is one we want or we don't. It has a really elegant fan shape, or double fan in the one in the photo, but I have noticed smaller versions growing out of any little crack in the concrete. Encourage or kill?

looksee

The perennial looks a bit like an iris, though if it is growing out of cracks in the concrete I wouldn't encourage it as it will not improve the concrete! Ask us again when the flower comes out. It seems a bit unlikely that a self seeded iris would get big enough to flower in cracks in concrete.

The cherry, the first pic appears to be an ash tree so it would need to come out from under the cherry tree. You could leave it till winter then try and lift it and move it, though ash makes a big tree so you may not have somewhere suitable for it. The other pic looks as though it could be a cherry sucker - I have a cherry tree doing the same, sending up suckers a good distance from the tree. I find them in more or less a straight line away from the tree. It won't replace the original, it will not be an ornamental or eating cherry, I would remove it. The original tree will be grafted and this is a sucker from the graft material.

randomguy

Thanks Looksee.

I will chop or replant the ash tree. And the cherry too.

For the weed, here is a photo from the other side (with irises in the background). Unlike the irises, it has a very distinctive shape - all of the leaves are in one plane, like a hand-held fan, or in the one in the photo, like two parallel fans.

looksee

Oh yes, they could be phormiums. That could be a flax flower coming on the varigated one. They are extremely vigorous, nice looking but you need a lot of space for them.

standardg60

I imagine they mean the one in the foreground , which is an Iris, they will seed around