Native crabapple

I have been considering getting a couple of native crabapples (M.angustifolia) to plant in my woods for wildlife. I have plenty of cedars around, so would it be a waste of time? I don't care if they are pretty to look at because nobody would ever see them, but I would like them to produce fruit. I have never seen any growths on my cedars, but Malus spp. are almost unheard of here.

Cambia,

If nobody sees them and all that you require is some fruit, you should try a few seedlings. Clip a few flowers in the spring for their fragrance. I find it a bit humorous what Auburn has to say about them: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/hort/landscape/347.html

Regards,
Ernie

Yeah, I have read that same thing, sounds like they've given up on it. I have also read that they are on the endangered list in Florida. Is cedar apple rust an introduced disease? I'm trying to figure out why this tree thrived a hundred years ago (according to older people) but are difficult to grow today. If I wanted to use Immunox as a preventative spray, when would be the best time to use it? Everything I have found says to spray when the fruiting structures start showing on the cedars, but I don't have any of those on my cedars.

Maybe it won't get the rust. Malus sargentii here has only a handful of spots on the whole tree, and they may not be Cedar/Apple Rust. The Crataegus get walloped with this endemic fungus, and most of those gaudy upright hybrids are bare in july, but my little sargentii remain dark green and fruitful.

If you seen the Crabapple trees over on campus you'd understand why they have given pretty much up on the native. Poor things are struggling and look terrible even though they still producing. Think some of it is folks want trees that are going to stay beautiful everyday all year long, they want trees they don't have to pick up after or harvest or prune anymore.

When I was kid, tree climbing wa s the best pastime and a great place to hide to avoid a paddling, you never see kids climbing trees anymore. A real shame.

I don't know if you can start seedlings, or how from the fruit, but I grabbed me a few off the tree. Now I wonder where I put them, or maybe they fell out my pocket. Thought I heard somebody mention that you can make jam or jelly from them.

I ordered some M.angustifolia seeds, at least that way the risk of bringing the fungus from a nursery is reduced. It's only five bucks for 23 seeds, if they don't make it then oh'well I tried.

E-guy,
My dad had a collection of a couple dozen seedling native crabs, collected from around east Alabama - I never attempted to speciate 'em, so I don't know if all were M.angustifolia, or if some were M.coronaria - or even M.ioensis. Susceptibility to CAR was variable - some years, some of them looked like canaries, they had so many yellow-orange spots on the leaves. But, it didn't seem to deter fruiting, and unlike hawthorns, serviceberries, and even an occasional pear, I never noticed the fruits being infected and becoming big masses of fungal fruiting bodies.
CAR is not introduced, and the natives evolved in concert with it - but as we've discussed in the past, the same fires that kept sweetgum and water oak at an acceptable level probably also kept the Eastern redcedars suppressed. There's probably more of them now than there were 50 or 100 or 400 years ago.
I've got one large-fruited native crab selection Dad found grafted and growing here - a large, 2.5-3" apple - but hard, green and exquisitely sour, just like the typical smaller ones. Perhaps it's a chance hybrid seedling with an orchard apple as one parent.
My Dad loved those hard, sour, astringent little fruits.
Bechtel crab, a selection of M.ioensis, is a nice ornamental - pink blooms, but I'll admit I've not paid much attention to its foliage throughout the summer - just the spring bloom and the persistent fruit that deer seem to like fairly well.

Yeah those red cedars are pretty weedy. I got a feeling some of them may get introduced to my new DR chipper.

That doesn't sound to bad a price. You might consider when they arrive to give them still a quick hydrogen peroxide bath since those seeds had to come from somewhere and I always give my seeds a quick dip before planting. There sometimes so many tiny little grooves on seeds that, I would rather dip em than take a chance on some hidden fungi or such.

When you get em up and growing are you gonna leave them as is or do you plan on grafting them to something else. Hope they all sprout for you.

CAR fungus is not spread by seeds - it cycles back and forth between the galls you see on Eastern redcedar(J.virginiana) and lesions on the leaves(as well as twigs and fruits, in some instances) of apples/crabs, quince, hawthorn, serviceberry, and pear. The spores are wind-borne.
There are evidently/supposedly strains specific for the various aforementioned members of the Rosaceae, but I'm not sure how host-specific they really are. Plenty of cedars here, and I've seen CAR on apples, hawthorns, and quince in my orchard, but have not noticed any on my pears or serviceberries, so perhaps I don't (yet) have the pear or serviceberry strains. But I have seen 'Autumn Brilliance' serviceberry and a couple of pear varieties (though not here, thankfully) have their fruits to masses of fungal fruiting bodies.
It's a pretty good bet that the fungus is already present in your environment, if E.redcedar and apples/crabs are already growing there. You'd have to eliminate every J.virginiana within probably 5 miles to be free of it - and prevent birds from re-introducing them.
Ain't gonna happen in the eastern US.

escambiaguy, I'm interested in Malus ioensis, but I'm not having much luck with finding out much about it and it's habits or diseases or or or. Do you by chance know of a good site?
Thanks much, Terry

I don't know much about Malus ioensis. I am trying to establish more native plants and got interested in M.angustifolia because it is native to AL and FL. It seems like I read somewhere that M.ioensis is more resistant to scab, but I imagine the dreaded rust problems will still be an issue. I'm going to start mine from seeds and plant a few of them out, but I think I'm going to try using Immunox to control disease. Just a few trees shouldn't be too much of a chore to spray, but I couldn't handle more than that.

And if you control rust by spraying, does the rust become resistant to the spray after a few seasons of use, much like insect pests can when insecticides are used exclusively and repeatedly on the same host subjects...

I'm not going to want to spray. If it's a native plant, I want it to survive on it's own. I just happen to really love crabapples and since I'm almost completely native, the malus ioensis is the one for my region.

OIKOS Tree Crops has offered some seedling selections of M.ioensis in the past.
http://www.oikostreecrops.com

Seems like, if I recall correctly, "Bechtel" crab is a named selection of M.ioensis. There are probably others.

Thank you Lucky. The site does say this