Fao: Fb.

[FB.]

Chris
Try taking buds from two-year-old wood if no suitable one-year-old wood.
Also clip off a few large twigs to see if they'll start to re-grow within a few weeks, to give some possibly-usable material for grafting, albeit a bit later than normally accepted.

Also consider waiting until the last moment and taking dormant twigs, seal the ends with wax to prevent dehydration, put in an airtight plastic bag in the fridge with a small amount of damp tissue and try using that for grafting in late winter.

[chris]

Thanks FB. The problem is that there's hardly any (sorry, don't know the correct terminology) mid-branch-buds? I've found 1 so far, and have taken that.

I'm going to go back - to have a real good look at it, there's plenty of buds at the tips of this years growth, but have been informed that these aren't suitable.

[FB.]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

Chop some small branches off the tree and see whether the buds below the pruning cuts regenerate new young branches on the old tree in the next few weeks, so that you can take some bud grafts from those new shoots in September, or take dormant scion material in the winter.

Alternately, take whatever material you've got and graft it. If the tree is going to die anyway, I'd take some buds from fruit spurs if I had to, and look to carefully prune those in coming years to gradually convert those them into shoots. Fruit buds and shoot buds can interchange their functionality if you persuade them in the right way.
i.e
If you remove all of a tree's fruit buds just before buds open in spring, it may convert some of the leaf buds into fruit buds.
Likewise: if you prune a tree too hard, it will convert fruit buds back into growth buds, or those buds will produce both flowers and a new shoot.

You can save this tree, but you might need to try unconventional ways to do it.

If it really comes to it and the tree is about to be destroyed: hack off a huge branch and push/bury it deep into damp but not waterlogged soil. A big piece can survive without roots for some months, especially if about three-quarters of the leaves have been removed a few days before chopping off the branch (it might even root itself!).
A big piece should survive until next spring (when it might sprout a few shoots before collapsing from water stress by early summer) - surviving for a while from dampness absorbed from the ground and from the nutrients already in the branch.
.