the beauty of flowers...Crab Apple

[Watto]

Thank you for sharing your treasures. I still like it and the new front is a winner.

[Akhi]

A treat to the eyes in Adelaide as most of the crab apples are far behind us now. Great taper you have there

[lenlen]

What a lovely tree! Thanks for sharing.

[bodhidharma]

A little bit of fruit and i thought a piccy would be good before they are cut off.

[Beano]

Wow. Is it grafted? I'd love to get one but all the crabapple I've seen were grafted with ugly grafts. Do crabapple require grafting to produce fruit and flowers at a young age, or is it merely to put new types on hardy rootstock? I'd love to know as I'm keen to branch out into these now I live in SA.

[shibui]

I think I can see a slight line on the trunk that may indicate this one is grafted but we'll see what Bodhi says.
Crabapples do not need to be grafted. The original meaning of crab in crabapple indicated that the tree was seed grown. Now we use it to describe the smaller fruited species.
You can grow crabapples from seed but like all seedling grown plants they may not be exactly the same as the mother as there will be new genes and gene combinations from the pollination of the flowers. seedlings may take 3-5 years to mature enough to flower.
You can also grow many crabapples from cuttings. I've been growing the variety 'profusion' from cuttings here. Cuttings can root in summer if you can maintain humidity but dormant, hardwood cuttings in winter are easier to manage. Some species and varieties may be more difficult to strike as cuttings. Cuttings may take a couple of years to mature and flower. it will depend on the pieces you use as the cuttings as well as how you grow them afterwards.
They should also layer but, like cuttings different types may be more difficult than others.
Grafting is relatively easy when the plants are dormant in late winter. If you use mature fruiting spurs as scions they will flower in spring - a couple of months after grafting. Grafting can have the advantage of using a rootstock with known characteristics and disease tolerances but you can graft onto any apple plant or seedling.

Don't make the mistake of digging suckers from around a nice crabapple and expecting them to be the same crabapple. Most are grafted so the suckers are from the rootstock. Suckers can be used as rootstock to graft onto but if it is already a freely suckering rootstock variety your new trees will probably also make lots of suckers and it is a pain having to constantly remove unwanted shoots from the base.

[RogerW]

If the crab apple is not grafted, then root cuttings grow rapidly.

roger

[Sno]

Hi Beano . Go the airlayer . If the tree you select is flowering then the branch you airlayer will also flower . I have had a layer 'take' in 3 months and the same tree another layer 'took' 3 years to take . The biggest layer I have taken was as round as beer can and I'm sure you could go bigger , that one 'took' in one season .

[bodhidharma]

Wow. Is it grafted? I'd love to get one but all the crabapple I've seen were grafted with ugly grafts.

Hi Beano, yes it is a grafted tree but i have kept it because it was a very good graft. I air layered the top of the tree may years ago and it is growing quite happily in the ground as a future Bonsai. I collected it many years ago and found them to be quite slow in producing ramification. Shibui has given good info and i would only add that leaf size is difficult to reduce.

[GavinG]

More fruit than leaves Bodhi? It'a mad beautiful generous rich thing, thanks for posting it at it's finest. Yes, it's not easy to reduce the leaves (although you can defoliate them). No, it doesn't matter.

Gavin

[Beano]

Thank you shibui, sno, roger and bodhi. I've already impulse bought a ginkgo so I'm trying to be careful and selective about my flowering fruiting tree choices. I'm itching to get some though. Thanks for the info!