Scientific Name
Malus x ‘David’
There are as many as 1,000 cultivars of crabapple trees that have historically been in the nursery trade, though fewer than 100 remain commercially available today. For a non-specialist, it makes little sense to try to identify a crabapple tree’s cultivar unless the original purchaser remembers it or kept its identifying tag. Crabapple breeding has been ongoing for so long that many trees today are hybrids of hybrids.
It is important to note that there is very little difference between crabapple trees and domestic (orchard) apple trees, which are also the product of extensive breeding. The most widely accepted distinction is fruit size: crabapples produce fruit less than 2 inches in diameter, while apples produce larger, sweeter fruit. Some crabapples, however, can also be quite palatable.
Crabapple breeding has successfully produced cultivars with a wide variety of decorative traits: flower color ranging from white to red, flower structure (number of petals), weeping or dwarf forms, fruit size and color (including fruitless types), leaf shape and fall color. Perhaps most important is disease resistance, which has been bred into the cultivars to reduce susceptibility to fireblight, scab and powdery mildew. Complete resistance is rare, and local climate conditions significantly affect susceptibility. Fortunately for Colorado, the dry climate keeps disease incidence to a minimum.
Crabapples are small to medium-sized trees that prosper in full sun. Most cultivars are cold hardy in our climate, well adapted to our region’s soils and can tolerate a degree of drought. They generally do not grow taller than 25 feet, although the current Colorado champion reaches 46 feet. The fruit is valuable for wildlife but can create a mess when trees are planted near sidewalks. Most crabapple cultivars are grafted onto different rootstocks, so basal trunk suckering can sometimes be a nuisance. Unfortunately, crabapples are not especially long-lived trees.
There are over a dozen different crabapple cultivars on the Regis campus. One of the most outstanding examples is the ‘David’ crabapple, chosen for its fine form, its location away from other trees, its showy white spring flowers and its abundant scarlet fruit in the fall. This cultivar generally reaches about 15 feet in height with a somewhat larger lateral spread. Its main drawback is that it flowers and fruits heavily only in alternate years.