Photo: Velella — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 4 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Tea crabapple is a vigorous, profusely flowering ornamental — pink buds opening to fragrant white blossom followed by abundant bright red, cherry-sized fruit — but its most distinctive biological trait is triploid apomixis: because its seed usually develops clonally rather than sexually, seedlings breed true to the mother tree, a rare trait among Malus that has made it valuable as a uniform seedling rootstock in Chinese apple production.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–8
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Tree 6–8 m, vase-shaped
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native to China — widely across Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces, plus Taiwan — with the species epithet referring to Hubei province.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium to vigorous — reaches roughly 7-12 m in height and spread, with cultivated specimens commonly cited around 20-25 ft (6-7.5 m).
- Spacing
- 600 cm (236 in) apart — about 36 m² (388 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Simple, unlobed, elliptic to ovate leaves 5-10 cm long, purplish when young and maturing dark green; fall color is yellow with coppery tones.
- Root system
- Typical fibrous, laterally spreading Malus root system; specific published detail on rooting depth for this species is limited.
- Fruit description
- Small, cherry-sized fruit to about 1 cm in diameter, ripening bright red in autumn — sour and astringent, valued chiefly as bird food and for ornament rather than fresh eating, in keeping with other small-fruited ornamental crabapples.
- Propagation
- Unusually for the genus, M. hupehensis is a triploid that reproduces largely by facultative apomixis — seed forms without full sexual fusion, so seedlings are essentially clonal copies of the mother tree and come true to type even growing near other Malus species. This makes seed propagation reliable for this species, and it is used in China as apple rootstock precisely because apomictic seedlings are genetically uniform (selected lines include 'Xingshan 35' and similar clonal seedling rootstocks); seed sown fresh in autumn in a cold frame is standard, with stored seed needing about three months of cold stratification at 1°C.
- Pollination
- ⚠ Mostly SELF-INCOMPATIBLE — needs a 2nd cultivar
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Thrives in light, medium, and heavy soils, including clay, and tolerates acidic to mildly alkaline pH; prefers moisture-retentive loam but tolerates drought once established.
How it spreads. Forms a single-trunked, vase-shaped to broad tree without significant suckering; self-seeds via its abundant bird-dispersed, cherry-sized fruit, and because reproduction is largely apomictic, self-sown seedlings tend to resemble the parent tree closely.
Growing tips. Generally regarded as a strong performer for disease resistance in the trade, though it can be susceptible to fire blight, and — like the rest of the genus — to honey fungus. Its main horticultural claim to fame beyond ornament is as breeding and rootstock material in China, owing to its apomictic, true-breeding seed. Vigorous and tolerant of heat, drought, and heavy soils once established. Holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Grow journal
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