Flowering Crabapple
Malus 'Indian Magic'
(MAY-lus)
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While looking through some old pictures from last fall and trying to do some hard drive house cleaning I came across this photo of ‘Indian Magic’. The tree was planted several years ago and each year it has had a few more apples but nothing that prepared us for the season of autumn 2009. It was completely covered with the tiny orange-red fruit with maybe a thousand times the apples of previous years. Nothing about the year said that it was going to crop like it did. The flowering of this tree in the spring was good and it usually has been but not spectacular. The rose red and white flowers seemed normal and certainly our rainy, gloomy garden season last year didn’t seem to portend any great fruit or berry crops. That is one thing I like about gardening and nature you can never quite figure out what is going to happen. Sometimes you can guess correctly about what is going to happen but often times mother nature throws a curveball and shows you something that you thought previously impossible or not plausible.
‘Indian Magic’ is what I consider a small stature Crabapple gaining a final height of about 15 feet tall and you can keep it less tall with pruning. It does seem to want to grow wide and can become up to 15-20 feet wide at maturity. This can also be kept under control with pruning. The number one factor in Crabapple cultivar selection, for me, is the disease resistance of the type. “Indian Magic’ was not selected on this basis (it was what they had at the nursery at the time) but I seem to have got lucky because it has stayed fairly clean over the years and turned into a handsome specimen. I am sure that the birds were having a feast most of the winter on these apples and hopefully a couple of bully Blue Jays didn’t try and take over and hog the crop. They are just too noisy. One other thing I wanted to add about Indian Magic is that it gets pretty nice fall colors (orange, red and yellow mix).
This rose photo was on the same ‘roll’ as he Crabapple from late October 2009. It is either ‘Easter Basket’ or ‘Flirtatious’. Both of which I have found to be ‘good’ roses to grow.
4 comments:
What a beautiful crabapple....I'm particularly fond of them. We had a pink flowering crab in the backyard of my childhood home. I always looked forward to it blooming each spring :)
Hi Judy,
I know what you mean it is a classic and dependable tree.
I don't think I've ever seen quite so many crabapples on one tree!
And I responded to your question on my blog, but yes I do frequent the Morton Arboretum which is fairly close to my home.
Hi Kala, thanks for the answer. You are so lucky. I think they have one of the best websites for botanical information and the collection looks fabulous. I will have to visit there sometime.
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