Planting can be challenging in a time of liner shortages when many of the “tried and true” species and cultivars are sold out or in short supply. Times like these can also be viewed as an opportunity to change up your product mix by trying varieties that are new or unusual, different from mainstream offerings, or improvements over standard offerings. As you finish up your spring orders, we challenge you to get out of your comfort zone and try something new.
Our suggestions aren’t criticisms of well-loved and widely planted favorites such as Red Sunset® and October Glory® Maples or purple leaf plums or other familiar species and cultivars. They’re simply encouragement to try something different. Expanding your species and cultivar options will give your customers more choices and the opportunity to broaden their tree palette.
Redpointe® Maple
Acer rubrum ‘Frank Jr.’ PP 16769
A superior selection of the widely planted species, Redpointe® Maple is distinctive for its rich, dark green, heat-tolerant summer foliage that turns to brilliant red in autumn. More upright and with a more dominant central leader than most red maple cultivars, its broadly pyramidal form and adaptability to urban growing conditions make it a natural choice for street tree plantings and cityscapes. Height and spread are approximately 45’ x 30’ after 30 years in an average urban landscape setting.
Ease of care in the nursery and in the landscape, plus tolerance of heat, cold, drought and varied soils (including those of higher pH levels) have helped it to become a favorite choice among growers of our red maple cultivars, and an excellent seller for them. Since its introduction in 2006, it has become our best-selling red maple.
Sparkling Sprite® Crabapple
Malus ‘JFS-KW207’ PP 27954
Pink buds of Sparkling Sprite® Crabapple open to fragrant, pink-tinged white flowers that smother its densely branched, rounded head. Perfectly suited for patio, terrace or container culture, the summer foliage of this petite top-grafted tree is especially clean, bright green and disease resistant. The show goes on well into winter, when an abundant crop of tiny persistent fruits turns from golden yellow to orange and attract birds to your garden. Growing to a height and spread of approximately 12’ x 12’, its perfectly rounded canopy maintains a year-round, formal, topiary-like shape with little to no pruning.
If the red-fruited Lollipop™ Crabapple has been your go-to tree for a topiary-like form, you’ll want to try this extraordinary top-grafted crabapple developed in our 30+-year crabapple breeding program. You’ll find it to have brighter green, more disease resistant foliage, a more densely branched and rounded head, and bright yellow fruit that turns orange as it persists longer into the winter months.
Mountain Sentinel® Aspen
Populus tremuloides ‘JFS-Column’
This leafy landscape exclamation mark brings columnar form to our native aspen. Ascending branches form an extremely narrow and upright tree of about 35’ height and 8’ spread at maturity. Its excellent performance in our mild, maritime USDA Zone 8 climate and hardiness through Zone 3 assures its adaptability over a wide planting range.
The golden yellow fall color and magically unique sound of fluttering leaves that make quaking aspens such popular landscape trees are neatly packaged in this arrow-straight selection. Eye-catching even in winter, its silvery-gray bark glows in stark contrast to a backdrop of dark evergreens or stormy skies.
As the trees in our arboretum mature, we observe the cultivar to be narrower and tighter in form than Swedish Columnar Aspen (P. tremula ‘Erecta’). According to Dirr and Warren in The Tree Book, this newer cultivar is “probably a hybrid with it, but foliage is more similar to a quaking aspen. Improved foliage disease resistance.”
Exclamation!® Planetree
Platanus x acerifolia ‘Morton Circle’
The perfect symmetry of Exclamation!® Planetree demands attention wherever it is planted. Its upright, pyramidal canopy is shaped by a strong central leader and well-spaced, upright-angled branches that make it an easy-care favorite of growers, landscape architects and arborists.
A top performer among crosses made in the 1980’s by Dr. George Ware at the Morton Arboretum, this introduction of Chicagoland Grows® is a hybrid of an unusually anthracnose-resistant North American native sycamore (P. occidentalis) and the naturally anthracnose-resistant Oriental Planetree (Platanus orientalis).
Its resistance to anthracnose and powdery mildew, moderate growth rate, symmetrical form, light-fruiting habit and resistance to frost cracking are among reasons to plant this remarkably adaptable urban tree, and to choose it over the old favorite and standard for comparison, Bloodgood London Planetree.
Perfect Purple Crabapple
Malus ‘Perfect Purple’
This well-named flowering crabapple is also the perfect replacement for the not-so-perfect flowering plums that are loved for their early spring burst of bright pink blooms. The love affair wears thin as the season wears on and their dark purple leaves fade to bronze green, foliage diseases take their toll and large messy fruits sometimes appear on branches that can be nearly defoliated by summer’s end. Not so for this tough and adaptable little crabapple!
Perfect Purple Crabapple sets the spring stage with deep pink blooms that are followed by dark purple foliage that crowns its perfectly rounded canopy. Its deep purple color holds well throughout the growing season and typically flaunts a medley of bright red tones in autumn, with touches of yellow and orange adding to the colorful display. Small fruits are dark reddish purple and long-lasting. More tolerant of heat and drought that purple-leaf plums and very cold hardy, this crab is a proven performer in Northern and intermountain regions.
Crimson Sunset® Maple
Acer truncatum x A. platanoides
‘JFS-KW202′ PP21838
Crimson Sunset® Maple leaves beat the heat, looking great while casting cool shade. Foliage resembles that of Crimson King Maple but resists tatter and scorch damage while retaining its rich, dark, glossy color through the summer months. Leaves turn reddish purple in autumn.
Narrower and more upright in form than Crimson King or Royal Red Maples, our hybrid of Shantung and Norway Maple is a better fit for modern landscapes than these older, better-known and once very popular cultivars of Norway maple. Introduced in 2010, it also offers better heat and cold tolerance.
