UNITED STATES—Fruit trees such as apricot, cherry, peach and plum, bloom about now. Some are already finished, while a few are just beginning. Apple and pear trees will bloom somewhat later. More colorfully, flowering or fruitless counterparts of such trees are on similar schedules. Flowering apricot has already finished bloom. Flowering crabapple will likely bloom last.
The difference between fruit trees and their flowering counterparts is not their bloom. It is their fruit or lack thereof. “Flowering” has become a euphemism for “fruitless”. Trees with such designation produce either no fruit or fruit of relatively inferior quality. Wildlife might enjoy some of any inferior fruit. Although even inferior crabapples might make good jelly.
Purple leaf plums are probably the most popular of this type of flowering or fruitless tree. Flowering cherry is less common. Flowering peach is somewhat rare. Fruitless pear is a popular street tree but may not bloom as profusely as the others. Also, it does not bloom quite as early. Flowering quince grows as shrubbery rather than trees with upright trunks.
Flowering trees are strictly ornamental.
While very closely related, fruiting trees and their fruitless counterparts are very different. Fruiting trees should obviously produce fruit. That is their primary purpose. Their fruitless counterparts are merely ornamental. The truly fruitless types grow and bloom where fruit would be a messy nuisance. For example, some perform well as small scale street trees.
Because they are fruitless, such trees do not require specialized dormant pruning. There is no need to prune to concentrate resources into developing fruit. Nor is there any need to prune to accommodate the weight of fruit. Fruitless trees can assume their natural form and scale instead. Although none are large trees, they can grow taller than fruiting trees.
Also, because they are fruitless, their bloom is their priority. They bloom more abundantly than fruiting trees, and some bloom with double flowers. Floral color is more diverse too, ranging from bright white to rich rosy, pink. Some flowering crabapple trees bloom nearly red. Since dormant pruning is unnecessary, blooming stems are splendid as cut flowers.
Highlight: Flowering Cherry
Flowering cherries are a complicated group of many distinct hybrids, of several species. Japanese cherry, Prunus serrulata, is the most common ancestor of almost all of them. It is a relatively small deciduous tree that does not get much more than 25 feet tall. The wild species produces unpalatable fruit, but its many hybrids are generally fruitless.
Most flowering cherries exhibit splendid autumn foliar color, with yellow, orange and red. Weeping cultivars develop strikingly pendulous form. Birch bark cherry exhibits distinctly smooth and chestnut brown bark, with broad lenticels. Weeping cultivars are sometimes grafted onto birch bark cherry trunks. This combines pendulous form with smooth trunks.
The primary allure of flowering cherries, though, is their profusions of early spring bloom. Floral color ranges from bright white to rosy, pink, although most cultivars are pastel pink. Flowers can be delicately single or billowy double. Some cultivars bloom slightly earlier or later than others, but all bloom quite early. Their blooming stems are pretty cut flowers.
Tony Tomeo can be contacted at tonytomeo.com.
