Help with crab apples, please
August 08, 2011
I'm having some trouble with crab apples. Not that they've got some terrible disease or the voles are eating them as well as everything else, no.
I have some great pictures of their flowers that I'd like to use - but I don't know what varieties they are. I know some expert plantspeople check in here, so can anyone help?
The first one (left, click to enlarge) has distinctive bi-colored flowers which I thought I'd be able to find, but not so far - not even in Father John Fiala's monumental book Flowering Crabapples.
The second one (right, click to enlarge) we thought might be 'Golden Hornet' but the flowers seem a little large, a little too blushed, and the foliage a little pale.
Finally, a very prolific one with darkish leaves (left below, click to enlarge) – not with purple foliage like 'Royalty' but with a purplish tint. It makes a neat rounded tree, with small purple-red fruits. 'Lemoinei' perhaps? It's not an old tree, so perhaps one of the more recent ones.
Crab apples are just not something I know a huge amount about. So any help will be gratefully appreciated.