Purple crabapple trees enhance home landscapes with vibrant foliage, striking blossoms, and ornamental fruit. Providing multi-season appeal, they are a popular choice for adding dramatic color and visual interest to gardens. Their distinctive hues create captivating focal points or vibrant backdrops.
What Makes a Purple Crabapple Perfect
An ideal purple crabapple tree features foliage that maintains a rich purple hue throughout the growing season, rather than fading to green. This consistent coloration ensures continuous visual impact from spring through fall. Its spring blossoms, often deep pink to rose-red, provide a striking contrast against the dark leaves.
The small, dark red or purple fruits persist on branches into winter, offering sustained interest and providing food for local wildlife. A healthy tree exhibits strong resistance to common diseases like apple scab, cedar-apple rust, powdery mildew, and fire blight. This resistance ensures the tree remains attractive and robust without extensive chemical intervention.
The mature size and shape of the tree are important for landscape integration. Purple crabapples come in various forms, including upright, spreading, or rounded habits, allowing gardeners to select a variety that complements their specific space and design preferences. A suitable height and width, generally 15 to 25 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet wide, is ideal for most home gardens.
Recommended Purple Crabapple Varieties
Several purple crabapple varieties are recommended for their ornamental qualities and disease resistance.
‘Prairifire’ is a popular choice, known for its upright, rounded form and excellent disease resistance to apple scab, fire blight, rust, and powdery mildew. Its leaves emerge purple-red, maturing to a reddish-green, and it produces dark red flowers followed by purplish-red fruit.
‘Royalty’ crabapple features deep red-purple foliage that holds its color well throughout the season, complemented by rose-red flowers. This variety grows about 15 to 20 feet tall and wide with an upright, spreading form. While it offers good ornamental value, its disease resistance can be variable, particularly susceptible to apple scab.
‘Royal Raindrops’ is a highly regarded variety, recognized for its deeply lobed, purple leaves that maintain their color all season and abundant magenta-pink flowers. It exhibits good resistance to common diseases and has an upright, spreading habit, reaching approximately 20 feet tall and 15 feet wide.
‘Purple Prince’ crabapple has vibrant rose-red flowers that emerge from carmine-red buds in mid-spring. Its foliage starts as purple-bronze, maintaining a good purple hue throughout the growing season. This variety grows about 18 to 20 feet tall and wide with a rounded form, boasting good resistance to apple scab and fire blight, and excellent resistance to rust and powdery mildew.
Planting Your Purple Crabapple
Proper planting is essential for the long-term health of your purple crabapple tree. Select a site that receives full sun (at least six hours daily), as this promotes the best flowering and foliage color. The soil should be well-draining, as crabapples do not tolerate soggy conditions.
Before planting, prepare rich, loamy soil with a slightly acidic to neutral pH (5.5-6.5). If soil is heavy clay or sandy, amend it with organic matter like compost to improve drainage and nutrient content. Dig a hole at least twice as wide as the root ball and no deeper than the root ball itself.
When placing the tree, ensure the root flare (where the trunk widens at the base) is at or slightly above the soil line. Backfill the hole with amended soil, gently tamping to remove large air pockets. After planting, water thoroughly to settle the soil around the roots.
Caring for Your Purple Crabapple
Consistent watering is crucial for newly planted purple crabapple trees, especially during dry periods in their first few growing seasons. Provide about one inch of water per week to keep the soil consistently moist but not waterlogged. Once established, these trees can develop some drought tolerance.
Fertilization is generally not needed in the first year if soil was properly amended. In subsequent years, apply a balanced granular fertilizer in early spring, following product instructions. Avoid over-fertilizing, which can promote excessive leafy growth at the expense of flowers and fruit.
Prune in late winter or early spring while the tree is dormant. Remove any dead, diseased, or crossing branches to maintain a strong structure and good air circulation. Also remove suckers (shoots growing from the base) and water sprouts (vigorous upright shoots on branches), as these divert energy.
Monitor for common pests and diseases. While disease-resistant varieties help, occasional issues like aphids or fungal spots can still occur. Early detection and appropriate action, such as horticultural oil for pests or raking up fallen leaves, can help manage these concerns.