Crabapple Tree

For a Plant that is Beautiful in all Four Seasons, Consider the Crabapple Tree

As one of the most impressive looking flowering trees you can buy, the crabapple tree is certainly a perfect specimen for any home landscaping job. The tree produces a unique and beautiful look during almost any time of any year no matter where in America you live. With most flowering trees though, the spring and early summer time is undoubtedly the best and most beautiful time for the flowering crabapple tree, as its multicolored buds begin to open to reveal a multitude of brilliantly colored flowers which last for several weeks. As the flowers of the crabapple tree begin to disappear with the onset of the fall months, the fruits begin to take form and can come in almost as much of a variety of colors as the flowers did before them. The colors of the crabapple tree’s fruits can mimic and contrast the changing colors of the leaves for autumn.

Although many people do not know that the crabapple tree is actually part of the rose family of plants, you can certainly tell of their kinship upon closer examination of the flowers. Many a crabapple begins to bloom during the late April to mid May timeframe, when they begin to produce their characteristic flowers with as little as five petals or as many as fifteen or twenty. A crabapple which has more petals to its flowers will keep the beautiful flowers for several weeks longer than a tree which has fewer petals. However, in light of keeping its flowers for so long, the crabapple with lots of petals to its flowers produces far less fruit during the autumn months.

Along with being a member of the rose family, the crabapple tree is also closely related to standard apple trees. One of the defining differences between the crabapple’s fruit and the apple tree’s fruit is the size of the fruit itself. Generally, crabapples are less than two inches in diameter while regular apples can be any size larger than two inches in diameter.