In 3 years I planted several apple seedlings. Only 1 flowered, but failed to produce apple. It flowered in the wrong season and lack pollination. This year is the 4th year. It flowered in the right time and season. Can people tell by the flower, leaves, bark, or stem if this going to be a crabapple or something special? The adult leaves are wavy. The flower is red at the beginning, then turn pink, and finally white. Large size flower. Flower stem is short and thick vs the crabapple that has long slender stem. This was also grafted to a crabapple tree. Will this be a guessing game until a fruit is produce?
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Ystwyth Valley apple breeders mentions that leaf size can be an indicator. This is what they say…
“Trees with small leaves nearly always produce small apples; hence juvenile seedlings with the smallest leaves can be discarded during their second year of growth. Conversely, large leaves generally correlate with large apples. However, selections based only the largest leaved seedlings may be weighted towards triploids.”
Of course crabapples have the potential to be amazing too so I personally wouldn’t discount small leaves!
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Not all crabs have a long, slender stem. ‘Kerr’ has a shostem, while it’s half-sib, ‘Centennial’ has that long stem.
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Honestly with seedling apples it’s really hard to tell from the flowers alone. The large flower size and short thick stems sound promising though, crabapples tend to have smaller flowers on longer stems. You’ll probably just have to wait and see what the fruit does this year. Four years from seed to flower isn’t bad at all.
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In the meantime, those pink-tinged blossoms are pretty to look at!
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Yes, the pink highlight the flowers. It does look nice and does have a strong fragrance. I didn’t smell it because I have allergy to pollen. Fragrance is stronger than the pink lady or gala according to the one that smell it.