Abstract:In order to comprehensively evaluate the effect of rootstock on the growth of grafted plants of Litsea cubeba and essential oil quality of fruits, the effects of grafting season, rootstock type and size on survival, growth, and fruit properties, fruit essential oil and citral content of grafted plants were studied by using ‘xianglinglong-1’ as scion. The results showed that the graft survival of three types of rootstock in different seasons ranged from 26.39% and 87.22%, and it was higher for grafting in autumn than in winter. When the rootstock diameter was 1.3 cm, the graft survival rate was higher than 1.0 and 0.8 cm, while the graft survival rate of LC24 was higher than that of LMCH and LCHS. The rootstock type had significant influence on plant growth, LC24 rootstock had the best DBH, fruity branch length, fruity branch thickness and fruity branch number, which were significantly higher than LMCH. Fruit yield, 100-grain weight, size, essential oil content and citral content of different rootstocks increased year by year, and 5-year-old plants were significantly higher than 3-year-old plants. LC24 stocks were significantly higher than the other two stocks, and LMCH performed the worst. Therefore, these would lay a foundation for the large-scale propagation of the fine varieties of L. cubeba and the understanding of the mechanism of rootstock-scion interaction.