With increasing emphasis placed on ornamental crab apples for landscape use, it is understandable that homeowners are searching for varieties that are most suitable to their needs.
Many kinds can be used in almost any garden, small or large, though some of the large varieties are out of place in small gardens. Several excel as lawn specimens, while others can be used to much better advantage in the back of the shrub border.
Making the most of crab apples in the home garden is not at all difficult. Of course, we must know a few things about them before we can make an intelligent selection.
Helpful are nursery catalogs, which usually mention important attributes, such as color, type of flowers, size, and color of the fruits, the color of the foliage, and the approximate form and ultimate size of the plants. The latter is most important.
About the clashing of colors, we need not worry because they never do, though some combinations are undoubtedly more pleasing than others, a matter governed by personal taste. It is that the pale pink varieties are more striking with pure white than with purple.
Suitable Crab Apple For Every House
There is a suitable crab apple for every type and size of garden and dwelling, especially for low-slung houses. A more compatible group of flowering trees and shrubs would be hard to find.
For small premises, varieties such as the Carmine crab (Mains atrosanguinea) and Sargent crab (M, sargenti) are invaluable.
The first has rose-red flowers and red and yellow, sometimes entirely red, fruits. The second blooms a week or so later with pure white flowers and tiny, purplish-red fruits. Both usually form a broad, round-headed bush.
Pink Bud Sargent Crab
There is also a variety of the Sargent crab, known as Pink bud Sargent crab, with pink instead of white buds and the flowers, first pale pink, later pure white.
After 10 or 15 years of growth, these varieties are approximately 6’ or 7’ feet tall and a little inure in width.
The flowering period of any crab apple normally runs from seven to 10 days. However, they do not all come into flower at the same time.
The Carmine, for instance, opens its buds a week or 10 days earlier than the Sargent but a week or so later than some of the Siberian crabs (M. baccata). One of this group of tree-like crab apples, the Manchurian, is always the earliest.
Native American Crab
On the other hand, the Native American crab apples, like the Iowa crab (M. focus’s) and the Eastern wild sweet crab (M. coronaria) are much slower.
Their double forms do not bloom until three weeks after the Manchurian has started the season for the entire apple family.
Thus there is a period of flowering that lasts four weeks or more. Few flowering trees or shrubs bloom that long, and it is not until the last of the crab apples have finished that the lilacs take over.
Midget Crab
Among the earliest crab apples, one of the best is the lovely Midget crab (M. micromalus). This is a slender branched plant, upright when young, but spreading when older.
Very floriferous, with rose-pink flowers and yellow fruits, it displays its delicate color to its advantage in front of Manchurians.
Shrub-Like Varieties
Among the shrub-like varieties, early to medium flowering, the following are outstanding:
- The Arnold crab (M. arnoldiana), with rose-red buds, fairly large flowers, opening delicate pink, turning pure white after a day or two, followed by the small, barrel or drupe-shaped yellow fruits;
- The Japanese flowering crab (M, floribunda) is much like the preceding, but with slightly smaller flowers and round yellow fruits;
- Katherine, with enormous quantities of large, double white flowers and small yellow fruits, often with a reddish cheek;
- Crimson Brilliant, with purple or bronze foliage, single and semi-double purple flowers, and purple fruits;
- Purple Wave, with dark purple leaves and single purple blossoms, Irene has the same spreading habit as the last two named, though it grows more slowly. It also has purplish foliage and single, rather large purple-red flowers. Fruits are dark purplish-red.
Scheidecker Crab
Flowering at the same time as this group or a few days later is the new hybrid Dorothea, with its large, double rose-pink flowers, an excellent specimen for the lawn.
The Scheidecker crab (M. scheideckeri), which blooms simultaneously, resembles Dorothea in flowers and yellow fruits, but its habit of growth is more upright, being nearly V-shaped. The flower petals are also much narrower.
Parkman Crab
Several other excellent varieties are also in flower then. The charming Parkman crab (M. halliana parkmani), with double, rose-colored flowers deserves notice.
It does not always perform as faithfully as others and is perhaps a prima donna, but when it does, it is a gorgeous mass of long-stemmed flowers. Usually, the Parkman crab is a shrub, rarely a tree.
Lemoine Crab
Still, another good but much larger growing variety is the Lemoine crab (M. purpurea lemoinei), with bright, purple-red flowers, dark purple fruits, and bronze foliage. However, it found a serious rival recently in the new hybrid, Liset (M. moerlandsii Liset).
This newcomer introduced a few years ago from the Hague, Holland, is not only more floriferous but has better-colored flowers and more handsome foliage. It also flowers at a much younger age. Both varieties have a rather dense, upright form.
Tea Crab
Entirely different is the Tea crab (M. hupehensis). If allowed to grow naturally, it becomes a broad, V-shaped, short-trunked tree or large shrub. Very long branches have numerous stiff, single-short laterals studded with spurs and buds.
The Tea crab excels as a single lawn specimen and should not be crowded by other plants. In flower, with pure white blossoms covering the tree from the base to the tips of the branches, it can easily hold its own in a beauty contest with any other flowering tree.
The small green fruits, with a brown or reddish blush, are of little importance. However, the birds like them.
Aldenham Crab
Space does not permit enumerating every good crab apple but one more excellent shrub should be mentioned. This is the Aldenham crab (M. purpurea aldenhamensis) which is the last of the purple-flowered varieties to open its buds.
These are semi-double and borne in profusion. The foliage is purplish or bronze, and the fruits, about three-fourths of an inch across, are brown to purple-red.
Hopa Crab
Among the early flowering, taller, tree-like crab apples, the Hopa crab (M. adstringens Hopa), with its masses of purplish-pink flowers and red fruits, is still much in demand.
A seedling of this variety, recently introduced as Patricia, has similar, larger flowers and bigger, juicy red fruits. The tree itself has a sturdier, more uniform framework and bolder foliage.
Jay Darling and Eley Crab
An attractive round-headed tree with purple-red blossoms is the Jay Darling crab, long a favorite.
It flowers a few days after Hopa and has purplish-bronze leaves and dark red fruit. This variety and the plant sold as Eley crab are the same, though, years ago, they were considered different.
Eley, originally described as a crab apple with long-stemmed, egg-shaped fruits, was introduced into America in about 1921.
Soon it became distributed over the country, but it refused to produce the original fruits wherever it was planted. Instead, they were larger, round to oblate, on short stems.
Finally, Eley reached the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and there, for reasons not yet explained, it produced the long and thin-stemmed, egg-shaped fruits.
When discovered, trees of the Jay Darling type were sent from Iowa to the Golden Gate Park, and these, as was now expected, produced not the Jay Darling but the Eley type of fruits.
Plants propagated from the original trees in that Park, and grown in Iowa, promptly reverted to the Jay Darling type, known in Iowa as early as 1915. Soil and climatic conditions probably have something to do with that behavior.
Makamik Crab
An interesting small tree is the Canadian hybrid Makamik, a neat-looking, short-trunked, round-headed tree with purplish foliage and large purple or pink flowers, followed by decorative bright red fruits.
Evelyn Crab
A week or so later, when the native crab apples hesitantly unfold their buds, a newly introduced hybrid, Evelyn, opens its large, fragrant, deep rose-pink flowers.
It has already reached Europe, where horticulturists rate it highly. On the sterile shoots, the purplish leaves are lobed like those of the seed-parent, the Iowa Crab, but unlike the green fruits of the native, it has red fruit.
Toringo Crab
To stretch the flowering season even further, there is the Toringo crab (M. sieboldi) and the Bedbud crab (M. zumi calocarpa). Both have masses of small white flowers and tiny, brilliant red fruits, beloved by many birds.
Toringo is better suited for the border or background. The Iledbud crab, a small low-branched tree, can be used effectively as a lawn specimen.
Nieuwland Crab
To finish the season with these ornamentals, one can do little better than to plant a Nieuwland crab (M. coronaria nieuwlandiana), a Bechtel (M. ioensis plena), or a Nova (M. ioensis flore plena nova), all with large, very double, deliciously fragrant, rose-colored flowers.
Nieuwland has the largest blossoms, and Nova the most deeply tinted of the three. All make superb small specimen trees.
44659 by Arie F. Den Boer