Stunning! A neighbors crabapple tree is in bloom. It is a cultivar of
Hopi malus crabapple. Most of its leaves have fallen and I see
pink-red-white blooms. Has anyone else observed such plant activity? Is
it the global warming that has tricked the tree into the metabolism of
Spring?

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

I suppose I could call the local news broadcasters of this region to
come and take a picture and include it in their news tonight or
thereafter of a case where a crabapple is in bloom and flower and this
is 16 October. Because few are going to believe my words on the
Internet.

Or, someone else, somewhere else has the same observation or experience
where a tree is in bloom and flowering at this moment in time. I
suppose plants in greenhouses can be tricked into blooming out of
season. We had a cold snap a few weeks ago and now are above normal
temperature which may have tricked the crabapple into blooming.

Would anyone have a metabolism explanation for this crabapple activity
to bloom before winter? Are apples species easily tricked?

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

In article .com,
wrote:
I suppose I could call the local news broadcasters of this region to
come and take a picture and include it in their news tonight or
thereafter of a case where a crabapple is in bloom and flower and this
is 16 October. Because few are going to believe my words on the
Internet.

Probably all the Hopa crabs in your area are doing the same thing.
Hopa is a very popular hardy ornamental crab for cold climates, so
there are probably lots of them around.

Or, someone else, somewhere else has the same observation or experience
where a tree is in bloom and flowering at this moment in time. I
suppose plants in greenhouses can be tricked into blooming out of
season. We had a cold snap a few weeks ago and now are above normal
temperature which may have tricked the crabapple into blooming.

Spring-flowering woody plants being "tricked" into blooming in fall, due
to unusual weather patterns isn't all that rare. In some areas it happens
every few years for some cultivars. It certainly isn't a desirable trait,
so most people would regard such cultivars as unsuited to that area if it
happens very often.

Would anyone have a metabolism explanation for this crabapple activity
to bloom before winter? Are apples species easily tricked?

Apples and other spring flowering temperate climate plants have a
chilling requirement. They have to be exposed to a certain number of
hours at a certain temperature range in order to bloom. I don't recall
the exact range, and it probably differs for different species, but it's
more or less domestic refrigerator temperatures in most cases. (i.e. on
the order of 40-45F). Normally, plants accumulate these hours (actually
some kind of product of temperature and hours) in both fall and spring.

Chilling requirement is genetic and has been selected for in some apple
cultivars to enable them to be grown in warm climates. Note that low
chilling requirements are suited both to warmer climates, and to cold
continental climates, where there isn't a lot of time at these temperatures
in spring and fall. Hopa was developed, IIRC, for the Canadian prairies,
so it may be a relatively low chill cultivar, i.e. easily fooled by an
unusually warm fall.

I don't know the mechanism of chilling requirement, but since it's a
feature of such extremely unrelated plants as tulips and apples, I
wouldn't be surprised if there are several different mechanisms. Since
it's an important factor in breeding apples for warm climates, there's
probably a fair bit of research done on it. IIRC, Israel is the source
of most of the low-chill apple cultivars grown in warm climates these
days, so that's probably where a lot of research has been done.

Archie wrote Or, someone else, somewhere else has the same observation
or experience
where a tree is in bloom and flowering at this moment in time. I
suppose plants in greenhouses can be tricked into blooming out of
season. We had a cold snap a few weeks ago and now are above normal
temperature which may have tricked the crabapple into blooming.

That is probably exactly what happened. We see it frequently in Callery
pear here in Texas.

M. Reed

Thanks for the comment about pear and for the Toronto comment about
Hopa crabapple.

I found out some relevant information today that sheds much light on
the metabolism of trees, or at least the genetics of trees. The
owner-planter of this hopa crabapple said that this tree acted
similarly in previous years. A year in which the Spring frosts did not
allow the tree to bloom or killed off the blooms. However, the tree
somehow remembers where it could not bloom in spring and reserved that
coding in its genetics such that as Autumn comes around with a tiny
cold snap and then a warming up releases those remaining codes of the
Spring-blooms to bloom.

So I think what happens is that a tree has a genetic coding to bloom in
Spring but if the Spring cold prevents the tree from blooming, the tree
still saves that coding and by Autumn if a cold duration followed by a
warming up releases that harbored coding of last Spring.

If that is true then there is a practical way of getting fresh apples
in winter if we plant a apple tree inside a huge tub of dirt that can
be wheeled inside a greenhouse or a greenhouse wheeled over a apple
tree and kept warm during winter. Of course the economics of keeping an
apple tree warm probably outweighs the benefit of fresh apples in
winter.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

It was reported by the local news that some lilac are blooming in 17
October. So apparently lilac as well as crabapple have this out of
season capability to bloom.

wrote in
oups.com:

If that is true then there is a practical way of getting fresh
apples in winter if we plant a apple tree inside a huge tub of
dirt that can be wheeled inside a greenhouse or a greenhouse
wheeled over a apple tree and kept warm during winter. Of course
the economics of keeping an apple tree warm probably outweighs the
benefit of fresh apples in winter.


Orchards in Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Tasmania provide off
season apples with less bother than moving trees around.

Sean