‘Royal Raindrops’ Crabapple
Malus 'Royal Raindrops'
20 feet high x 15 feet wide
Zone 4
Full Sun to Part Shade
‘Royal Raindrops’ Crabapple’s beautiful purple cutleaf leaves emerge in spring and persist that color until autumn changes the purple to a brilliant orange! In May expect masses of deep pink flowers to emerge to cover the tree. Small 1/4″ ornamental fruit develops in summer and persists till winter when the birds will feast on them. This crabapple has a very strong resistance to fireblight, a disease common to other varieties of crabapples. Handles clay soils and wind easily.
Throughout this site, the following are used as guidelines for watering established plants:
These truly xeric plants can live with our 12 inches of natural annual precipitation and only need a winter watering during a multi-year drought, but they will thrive with a monthly watering. Overwatering will kill some of these. These plants are adapted to intermittent deep
watering with soil drying to a depth of a few inches between waterings. Watering frequency may be every couple of weeks during the active growing season and maybe only one winter watering for optimal care. These plants need regular watering somewhat like a bluegrass lawn so that
they never dry to depth in the root system during the active growing season, and need occasional winter watering to prevent root dessication and resultant plant
death. About sizes of our plants:
Sizes indicated with a # are roughly the equivalent in gallonage; so a #2 is about a 2 gallon pot size; b&b stands for balled and burlapped.