To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Suggestions for crabapples for birds?
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 21:58:05 -0600
Welcome, Tom!
I have Fr. Faila's book on flowering crabapples, and there's one variety
that he mentions as being very popular with birds in the fall, and then in
the spring the robins would flop around drunk from the fermenting fruit. He
has a lot of details about disease and the size of the fruit, as well as the
size and shape of the trees. Worth looking to see if there is a copy in a
local library. Mine is at home, no computer there or I could just look it
up for you. I suppose we could do it by phone. There are some crabapples
really worth avoiding, due to disease problems. I'm not sure how easy or
hard some of his recommended trees would be to get, but I'm quite sure that
if you go through the trouble of getting, planting, tending, and waiting for
a tree to crop, you'll want it to not only do well, but to do what you
wanted it for in the first place. What you can pick up at a local nursery
may or not fit your bill. Actually, you'd be wise to call around and see
what they carry, and then look them up on the Net, keeping in mind that
nurseries usually won't tell you what's wrong with what they are selling.
Fiala's book will tell you that. Donna