My red fleshed apple seedling on its second spring is acting weird. It’s the same one potted on my deck previously shown. This past week the new leaves have taken on the look of a red maple. Totally bizarre look to them. If I hadn’t sprouted those seeds carefully myself from the core of a Lucy glow apple, I would not go apple tree. This is the new growth.
All the rest of the leaves look normal oval shape for apples. It’s only the new growth in the last week. These leaves are larger sized too than the previous oval ones. Almost twice as big in comparason.
Some of the other seedlings from the Lucy glow apples are showing weird leaf morphology. All of these are on their second spring and no such leaves grew last year. Very weird.
Yes, I see those strange leaves once in a while on young apple seedlings. They seem to have a juvenile period where the leaves are smaller and much more lobed. When the trees are about as high as a person, then the mature regular apple leaf type usually shows up. They also can have thorns and strange branches on the lower stem. I think it is their natural defense against grazing to have these two different types of growth.
You can see one of those maple type leaves on the two year old seedling in the center in the foreground. And the enormous range of leaf type and size throughout the other seedlings.
Haha, well that is extreme! And I think I have never seen it as pronounced as in your seedlings. But it does show up regularly, probably more often when crossed with wild or crab apples.
I ran through my seedlings and this is the one with the most lobed seedling leaves - for a dessert apple cross:
I also have some seedlings of a feral ornamental crab apple that grew really well in an area that was flooded for 6 months in winter, and so I got some seeds to try the seedlings as a rootstock.
All seeds are from the same three or four apples from the same tree - yet the leaf shape differs a lot among the siblings:
