Hi all and a merry Christmas Eve.
My local nursery had some grafted M. doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' in bloom, and I couldn't resist buying one. They didn't have a Monrovia tag, but that is from where I believe they came. They all looked healthy with the exception of the graft unions, which had varying degrees of overgrowth from the scion. One had some suckers coming from the rootstock that looked like M. grandiflora.

I've been reading about issues with using M. grandiflora as the rootstock and resulting stunting of the tree. I would hate to have to return the tree since it looks perfectly healthy otherwise and is loaded with flower buds, but I don't exactly want a tree that isn't going to grow either.

Have any of you experienced any stunting with M. doltsopa on grandiflora roots? Or is the overgrowth mainly a cosmetic issue? Since doltsopa does get huge, I wouldn't mind a slight dwarfing effect. Severe stunting, on the other hand, wouldn't be good. I have found several references to planting grafted magnolias deeply to encourage the scion to root and eliminate incompatibility issues (M. campbellii seems prone to these), but this would mean putting the top of the rootball 5 inches deep in this case. Everything else I have read about magnolias says that they resent deep planting, so I'm conflicted as to what I should do.

Thanks