Each Twig a Perch—Prairiefire Crabapple

Hung with sparkling white lights, the old Japanese maple presided over the garden as matriarch. Her limbs cast shade on the patio in the late afternoon. Her plum-colored leaves smoldered a romantic mood.

Then, one day, we noticed die back. One limb gone, followed the next year by the entire tree. A small spurt of leafy twigs from the base was her only sign of life.

A nearby rose, ‘The Fairy’, once full of pink buds and fierce thorns, was also dead. Two anomalies stood brittle and bare, evoking winter throughout a summer lush with moor grasses, torch lilies, geraniums, and a buxom rose of Sharon.

I suspected verticillium wilt, a horticultural nemesis. Verticillium, a fungus, blocks a plant’s water flow. Devastating. I’ve seen it’s deadly signs many times in garden Japanese maples. Roses are also susceptible, as well as a long list of other dear ones.

Even when you know that a garden is thing of continual change, the loss of a tree feels like the loss of an old friend. It can take awhile to let go and welcome someone new into your heart.

This Fall, we were ready. I chose from a list of trees known to be naturally resistant to verticillium. Once the fungus is in the soil, it’s nearly impossible to eradicate. You must plan accordingly.

Rising to the top of the list for it’s multiple disease resistances along with four season beauty and rich habitat value was the crabapple cultivar known as Prairiefire (Malus ‘Prairiefire’).

The young tree from the nursery came adorned with lingering rosy gold leaves and a scattering of small round fruits. It’s the perfect plant of the month for November. And so, I offer you an ode to this deserving garden tree.

We don’t say prairie here.
Oregon is known first for her
forests.
Only to those who can see back in time,
before grass-seed farms
and sheep pastures,
back to the long habitation
of the Kalapuya People,
rich with fire culture,
is Oregon understood by oak-studded
savanna.

Savannafire would be the name
of the crabapple cultivar
if she were bred here.

It was the the 80’s,
my mom in shoulder pads
and asymmetrical earrings,
when Prairiefire came into horticulture
in the midwestern state of Illinois,
land of tall grass
prairies.

Nevertheless,
this is a tree for Oregon.
Malus ‘Prairiefire’,
the prairie fire crabapple,
broadly small,
spreading a rounded crown,
alive with color,
bees, birds, beauty,
and vigorous good health.

Every season she offers awe;
open your doors to her
flush of rosy new spring leaves,
with berry red flower buds,
becoming buzzing pink blooms.
In summer she beckons you to sit
beneath the cool of her purple-green shade.
Leaves alight with her namesake fire in fall.
She offers a generosity of tiny apples,
beads adorning each twig,
each twig a perch
for cedar waxwing and robin,
red on bare branch,
red in the beak,
red winter bark,
grace of lines
against gray winter sky.

Such beauty,
abundance,
and buoyant health.
Why don’t we meet her here more often?
Forty-some years after her debut,
will you welcome Prairiefire to your garden?
Go ahead, call her
Savannafire.

Rooted in this place,
she’ll be right at home.