My New Dwarf Crabapple Cultivars

[milehigh_7]

He is @Brent here. Cryptic, right?

LOL!

 

[sdavis]

So this past fall I collected lots of crabapple seed from three different trees around my city, Ithaca, NY. There are a wide variety of crabapple cultivars planting in my city as street trees, some of them are quite old, so I feel the cross pollination between all these trees could explain the amount of genetic diversity I’ve seen in the seeds I started. I started the seeds this spring after cold stratifying in my fridge and now I have probably two hundred something crabapple seedlings.

As luck would have it I have identified three incredibly unique dwarves amongst the bunch. Just wanted to share these little guys with you all. My hope is that they all survive the winter and I can start propagating them in the future, and patent them as unique cultivars. Also if anyone knows anything about patenting a plant cultivar I would be interested in that info.

Here we go, here are the three dwarves next to some of the non dwarf crabapples from the same batch of seeds, for perspective.
Dwarf number 2: really tiny leaves with bright red stems. The leaf shape is not smooth and is somewhat reminiscent of some hawthorn leaves.
Dwarf number 3: also super tiny leaves, stems are a darker red, and leaves are a really gorgeous dark green.



I’m really hoping #2 and #3 can put on some more growth before winter, but their growth rate is understandable given their minute leaf size. I plant to build some top of cold frame this fall and all three of these will go in there for added protection. Any thoughts, suggestion, comments are welcome!
View attachment 201990

How did you germinate the seeds?

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

@Mike Hennigan
Nice project, and with patience, could really be something great. As to patenting plants, I last looked into it a decade or more ago, and decided it wasn't worth the expense as a hobby grower. It takes some cash, and it takes time, roughly 5 more so years from beginning the patent application to receiving the patent. You then have the cost of policing the violators yourself. There are no ''patent police'', you have to spend the time. Average patent fee is usually less than $2 per plant, most run about $1.10 or so for woody trees and shrubs. For perennials the fee you can collect is less, often around $0.25. But this is from memory rather than current information. If you can partner with a major nursery having them do the propagation, you might have a good set up. But all this is moot until you actually get the seedlings up to size enough to begin to test their traits.

@JoeR - there are many here who know more than me, I'm just willing to spend the time typing. I'm a sucker for flattery, you got me to respond.

Brent Walston is the man I take my hat off to for all things propagation. Much of what he knows is shared freely on his website, in the articles archive. http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/articles.htm

Apples, and crab apples are notorious for seedlings taking a long time to first bloom. While there are a few seedlings that will bloom in as little as 5 years, or whatever the ''internet'' promised, the majority will take 10 years or more. A full 30 years is not unheard of. So of your 300 seedlings, expect maybe one or two to bloom quick, majority around 10 years and maybe a third will take near or more than 20 years. Key to getting a seedling apple, or crab apple to bloom quickly is unrestricted growth. This is of course, contrary to the goals of bonsai. So even if you have a seedling that potentially could bloom in 7 years, if you grow it in a container, it will likely take quite a bit longer.

Commercial apple breeders try to get around the slow to bloom problem by grafting. They will bud graft of the seedling being tested onto commercial understock. Then plant it out in their nursery test plots. The scion will often bloom in about 5 years from grafting even if the original seedling won't get around to blooming for many years. Grafting onto normal rootstock would be a good way to test the dwarf growth characteristics of your special seedlings. If you are careful about keeping scions labeled, you can graft all three of your special seedlings on a single understock. Save space that way. But if you can not ground grow your grafted tree it won't save you time. Also while grafting ''can'' get the seedling to bloom in as little as 5 years, it is not guaranteed, some seedlings are just stubborn, and no matter what you do will want to take their own time to get around to blooming.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

By the way, ease of bloom induction, time to first blooming is a heritable trait. Keep only the first 5 of 300 seedlings to bloom, and then only cross between those first 5, then for the next generation again select only the first 5 of several hundred, breed them to each other, continue this process for 3 generations. By the 4th generation you will see a significant shift in the percentage of your seedlings blooming from seed to a much shorter time. However, you have to choose only from the first to bloom, no matter how good or bad the flowers look. You may also loose desirable foliage and branch structure traits. So while this type of breeding has its merits, because other traits are what make crab apples marketable this type of selective breeding has not been widely done.

 

[JoeR]

@Mike Hennigan
Nice project, and with patience, could really be something great. As to patenting plants, I last looked into it a decade or more ago, and decided it wasn't worth the expense as a hobby grower. It takes some cash, and it takes time, roughly 5 more so years from beginning the patent application to receiving the patent. You then have the cost of policing the violators yourself. There are no ''patent police'', you have to spend the time. Average patent fee is usually less than $2 per plant, most run about $1.10 or so for woody trees and shrubs. For perennials the fee you can collect is less, often around $0.25. But this is from memory rather than current information. If you can partner with a major nursery having them do the propagation, you might have a good set up. But all this is moot until you actually get the seedlings up to size enough to begin to test their traits.

@JoeR - there are many here who know more than me, I'm just willing to spend the time typing. I'm a sucker for flattery, you got me to respond.

Brent Walston is the man I take my hat off to for all things propagation. Much of what he knows is shared freely on his website, in the articles archive. http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/articles.htm

Apples, and crab apples are notorious for seedlings taking a long time to first bloom. While there are a few seedlings that will bloom in as little as 5 years, or whatever the ''internet'' promised, the majority will take 10 years or more. A full 30 years is not unheard of. So of your 300 seedlings, expect maybe one or two to bloom quick, majority around 10 years and maybe a third will take near or more than 20 years. Key to getting a seedling apple, or crab apple to bloom quickly is unrestricted growth. This is of course, contrary to the goals of bonsai. So even if you have a seedling that potentially could bloom in 7 years, if you grow it in a container, it will likely take quite a bit longer.

Commercial apple breeders try to get around the slow to bloom problem by grafting. They will bud graft of the seedling being tested onto commercial understock. Then plant it out in their nursery test plots. The scion will often bloom in about 5 years from grafting even if the original seedling won't get around to blooming for many years. Grafting onto normal rootstock would be a good way to test the dwarf growth characteristics of your special seedlings. If you are careful about keeping scions labeled, you can graft all three of your special seedlings on a single understock. Save space that way. But if you can not ground grow your grafted tree it won't save you time. Also while grafting ''can'' get the seedling to bloom in as little as 5 years, it is not guaranteed, some seedlings are just stubborn, and no matter what you do will want to take their own time to get around to blooming.

Aha but you DID know though! There may be more educated individuals on here than you two, true, but you both are very generous in sharing the info. So thank you.

I did recall someone saying that before, that apples can take many many years to flower. I wasn’t 100 percent sure so I just parroted. And yes Brent is the man, I have the book he recommends and I suppose in hindsight I should have looked to see if there was literature in it on Apples from seed.

 

[Mike Hennigan]

How did you germinate the seeds?

In the fall I removed the seeds from the fruits. Then I put the seeds in ziplock bags with a little coco coir and added a little water. I squeezed out any extra water from the coco coir, you want it to be slightly moist in the bag but there should be no standing water. Then I put the bags into the crisper drawer in my fridge and waited.

The crabapples started to germinate while still in the fridge, and early at that. In February. So I planted the seeds into tubs and kept them under t5 fluorescent grow lights until the last frosts and then moved them outside. They grew pretty substantially before I even moved them outside.

 

[Mike Hennigan]

@Mike Hennigan
Nice project, and with patience, could really be something great. As to patenting plants, I last looked into it a decade or more ago, and decided it wasn't worth the expense as a hobby grower. It takes some cash, and it takes time, roughly 5 more so years from beginning the patent application to receiving the patent. You then have the cost of policing the violators yourself. There are no ''patent police'', you have to spend the time. Average patent fee is usually less than $2 per plant, most run about $1.10 or so for woody trees and shrubs. For perennials the fee you can collect is less, often around $0.25. But this is from memory rather than current information. If you can partner with a major nursery having them do the propagation, you might have a good set up. But all this is moot until you actually get the seedlings up to size enough to begin to test their traits.

@JoeR - there are many here who know more than me, I'm just willing to spend the time typing. I'm a sucker for flattery, you got me to respond.

Brent Walston is the man I take my hat off to for all things propagation. Much of what he knows is shared freely on his website, in the articles archive. http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/articles.htm

Apples, and crab apples are notorious for seedlings taking a long time to first bloom. While there are a few seedlings that will bloom in as little as 5 years, or whatever the ''internet'' promised, the majority will take 10 years or more. A full 30 years is not unheard of. So of your 300 seedlings, expect maybe one or two to bloom quick, majority around 10 years and maybe a third will take near or more than 20 years. Key to getting a seedling apple, or crab apple to bloom quickly is unrestricted growth. This is of course, contrary to the goals of bonsai. So even if you have a seedling that potentially could bloom in 7 years, if you grow it in a container, it will likely take quite a bit longer.

Commercial apple breeders try to get around the slow to bloom problem by grafting. They will bud graft of the seedling being tested onto commercial understock. Then plant it out in their nursery test plots. The scion will often bloom in about 5 years from grafting even if the original seedling won't get around to blooming for many years. Grafting onto normal rootstock would be a good way to test the dwarf growth characteristics of your special seedlings. If you are careful about keeping scions labeled, you can graft all three of your special seedlings on a single understock. Save space that way. But if you can not ground grow your grafted tree it won't save you time. Also while grafting ''can'' get the seedling to bloom in as little as 5 years, it is not guaranteed, some seedlings are just stubborn, and no matter what you do will want to take their own time to get around to blooming.

@Leo in N E Illinois Thanks for your thoughtful and informative response! I did not even think about grafting to root stock, but you just put all sorts of ideas into my head. I figure in a couple years I could take cuttings of these dwarfs and graft to root stock. This should give me an accelerated growth rate I would think, and hopefully speed up flowering. If I can plant these grafted trees in the ground, I bet I could produce some real material with these dwarfs in a much faster time frame. I figure I could air layer stock off of the grafted mother trees.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

I have limited experience grafting, most of my graft attempts failed, but my crab apples thrived. Bud grafting a single bud from a stem of the scion, onto understock is relatively easy with apple family. Try it. It does not require ''big plants'' as the scion source, since you only need a few individual buds. Better have a very sharp knife. Look up ''Bud Grafting'', lots of good resources on internet, the ''Fruit Explorers'' and other groups have nice references.

 

[Mike Hennigan]

Here’s a little update on these little guys. Well, the two ultra dwarf seedlings with the super tiny leaves died this summer. Kind of a bummer, because they made it through the winter and leafed out this spring. Even put out a little new growth. But they started to fade fast once temperatures got hotter. It seems like they just weren’t vigorous enough to live. Considering these mutations are almost always deleterious in the wild it make sense.

Fortunately the larger leafed of the three dwarfs is doing really well! Because it grew pretty vigorously last season I up potted it into a 6 inch pot. And it has grow really well this season, it even branched. So it basically has two leaders now. The leaves started growing a bit larger after heavy fertilization. Took these pics on October 5th, finally uploading them. It’s entering some nice fall color so I’ll see if I can snap some more pics tomorrow. Look at the internode length on this thing!!!!!

 

[Forsoothe!]

Plant patents are pretty expensive as Leo says, between $10 and 20k plus the yearly costs for monitoring the marketplace and enforcing the patent rights by a group that does that, maybe $2k per year. Without enforcement, it's worth nothing. It has to be renewed every five or so years for about $5k. And it takes DNA or otherwise testing to identify the specific characteristic you are patenting. That process will be costly enough, and the lawyers doing the patent searches and filing aren't cheap, but the ongoing government filing fees are pretty stiff, too. If you don't see a revenue stream of $20k/yr, it won't work. Remember, that doesn't include the costs of producing and marketing a single tree.

As to whether you can find a grower who would put up the money, etc., and pay you a royalty, there are thousands of trees they can produce, probably hundreds and hundreds of Crabapples, for nothing. Your tree would have to be spectacular in some way.

 

[Mike Hennigan]

Plant patents are pretty expensive as Leo says, between $10 and 20k plus the yearly costs for monitoring the marketplace and enforcing the patent rights by a group that does that, maybe $2k per year. Without enforcement, it's worth nothing. It has to be renewed every five or so years for about $5k. And it takes DNA or otherwise testing to identify the specific characteristic you are patenting. That process will be costly enough, and the lawyers doing the patent searches and filing aren't cheap, but the ongoing government filing fees are pretty stiff, too. If you don't see a revenue stream of $20k/yr, it won't work. Remember, that doesn't include the costs of producing and marketing a single tree.

As to whether you can find a grower who would put up the money, etc., and pay you a royalty, there are thousands of trees they can produce, probably hundreds and hundreds of Crabapples, for nothing. Your tree would have to be spectacular in some way.

Yea I decided shortly after the original post that I definitely wouldn’t be attempting to patent it. Thinking maybe I’ll just copyright it instead... trademark it?! ©

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Hey Mike,
Looking good. The survivor still looks unique as far as crab apples go. Wonderful short internodes. Outstanding.
Leo

 

[Mike Hennigan]

Hey Mike,
Looking good. The survivor still looks unique as far as crab apples go. Wonderful short internodes. Outstanding.
Leo

Super unique. This surviving one was that one that had three cotyledons when it first germinated, instead of the normal two. Which I believe has resulted in more a “whorled” bud arrangement, instead of the standard alternate bud arrangement. Based on the little info I could find on mutant plants that germinate with three cotyledons, my research seems to back that up. Often three cotyledon plants have what’s called “whorled phyllotaxy”. The bud/leaf arrangement is more like a spiral around the stem with minuscule internode length. The leaves are interesting too. More elongated that a typical crab.

 

[Perplexody]

It's there any update on this

 

[Mike Hennigan]

It's there any update on this

The dwarf crab from my last post with photos is really bushed out and much bigger. I potted it into a 2 or 3 gallon pot. Will take a photo when I get a chance.

 

[Perplexody]

The dwarf crab from my last post with photos is really bushed out and much bigger. I potted it into a 2 or 3 gallon pot. Will take a photo when I get a chance.

Have you been able to take cuttings or has it been exclusively growing

 

[Mike Hennigan]

Have you been able to take cuttings or has it been exclusively growing

no cuttings yet. Just growing. I wanted to get it big and healthy before I try to propagate it.

 

[Forsoothe!]

The healthiest and most protected environment for potentially high-value stock is in the ground, caged so herbivores can't have their way with them. There are too many ways for plants to perish, and once gone they are irretrievable.

 

[Crazy Diamond]

no cuttings yet. Just growing. I wanted to get it big and healthy before I try to propagate it.

Root cutting are a good option in Malus keep it in mind in future repotings

 

[Mike Hennigan]

Here is that dwarf today. It’s growth habit actually really reminds me of a koto hime Japanese maple. The node arrangement is kind of like a dense spiral just like koto hime as opposed to a typical opposite arrangement you see on normal crabapples. Also it seems to be somewhat to very basally dominant. You can see it is really bushing out and has put more growth on from low branches elongating than it has on the apex this year. Leaves remind me of willow leaf ficus in their shape. Pics:


Since I started this thread I have identified a few more dwarf like crabs from this batch. I had a few hundred seedlings it seems like some of them made their growth habits more apparent after a year or two of growth. Most are similar to a “regular” crab but slightly more compact but this one is really quite compact and seems really promising. It is not as weird as this first dwarf, just seems very compact. Pics: