Malus spectabilis Seeds | Chinese Flowering Crabapple
LATIN NAME: Malus spectabilis
COMMON NAME: Chinese Flowering Crabapple
Plant Profile
In Chinese garden design the crabapple holds a place a Western border does not quite reproduce: it is a courtyard tree, planted against a wall or beside a pool where the bloom can be watched from a window, and it is paired in tradition with peonies and magnolias so that the spring sequence runs from white through pink to deep rose. Song-dynasty verse returns to the flower again and again, and the image that survives is of blossom opening in rain and being knocked down by wind.
The double and semi-double forms come from petalody, the developmental shift in which stamens develop as petal-like organs instead of producing anthers. The garden form sold for well over a century as ‘Riversii’ carries a deep rose-pink flower with several layers of converted organs; the price of the display is a reduced set of fertile stamens, so fruiting is lighter than on a single-flowered tree. Look closely and the transition is visible, because the inner whorls keep the veined texture of a filament given a petal’s width.
The fruit is a pome, and the structure explains its shape: the ovary is sunk inside a floral cup, and as the fruit ripens the ovary wall fuses with the surrounding tissue, leaving the dried calyx as the little crown at the base. Cut one across and five seed chambers sit in a star at the centre, embedded in flesh that is mostly floral cup rather than ovary. This is the same architecture as the orchard apple, which is why the crabapples are so useful in breeding.
Science & Biotechnology
Species of Malus carry the traits the cultivated apple lost on its way to size and sweetness, and this species belongs to the pool of wild relatives used for disease resistance and cold tolerance. The chemistry that marks the genus is phloridzin, a dihydrochalcone glucoside found in leaves, bark and fruit of Malus and rare outside it, together with cyanidin glycosides in the pink petal and the fruit skin. The seed holds amygdalin, the cyanogenic glycoside it shares with the rest of the family, which is why crabapple pips are not food.
Uses & Benefits
In ornamental horticulture the tree is planted for spring display, for small yellow or red fruit in autumn, and for the yellow leaf that follows. It is a favourite bonsai subject in China and Japan, worked for flower and fruit at small scale, and it is also used as an ornamental rootstock under garden apples where a compact, floriferous frame is wanted. Give it an open position, prune lightly after flowering, and thin the crown so light reaches the fruiting spurs.
The crabapples are small, tart and full of pectin, and they make a bright firm jelly when cooked with sugar; strain the pulp through a bag rather than pressing it, and the set is reliable without added pectin. The fruit is also pickled and preserved. Keep the seed out of the kitchen: the cyanogenic glycoside it contains is a hazard for anyone who crushes and eats it in quantity.
Growing from Seed
Named crabapples are propagated by grafting or budding onto a rootstock, because seed does not come true and a semi-double form must be cloned to keep its flower. Micropropagation from axillary buds on a cytokinin-rich medium is used commercially for some selections, and it underpins the virus-indexed stock nurseries sell. Rootstocks are usually seedling apple or a semi-dwarfing clone, which is why a bought tree flowers early in life while a seedling waits longer.
Sow in autumn into a gritty loamy mix and leave the pan in a cold frame through winter, or stratify in damp sand and sow in early spring. Seedlings are quick once they start; prick them out when they show two true leaves and the first shoot has hardened, then pot them on into deep containers because the young root runs downward. Plant out at around thirty centimetres of top growth, in full sun, allowing four to five metres between trees.
Apple scab spots leaves and fruit in wet springs, and aphids colonise young shoots in numbers, so keep the crown airy and wash the tips with a strong jet of water rather than reaching for a spray. Check stems for the cankers and shepherd’s-crook shoots of fire blight where the disease occurs locally, and remove affected wood well below the damage.
Our Take
Plant one where you can see it from a window and accept that the best years are the wet ones; blossom in rain is the point of the tree. The crabapple group is deep, and the pages on Malus halliana, Malus hupehensis and Malus baccata cover three very different Chinese and Siberian approaches to the same idea.
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