Sun Rival

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Sun Rival is a good all-round weeping ornamental crab apple. The blossom is profuse, going from pink-bud to white fully open flowers.

The fruits are small, light red in colour, and hang like cherries.

Sun Rival grows with a distinctive semi-weeping habit, with branches often reaching the ground.

Growing and Training

Sun Rival has good disease resistance (even by crab apple standards).

If you wish to have more control over the height at which the branches start to weep, we sometimes have 1-year bare-root trees of this variety. These can be trained up to about 2m or more using a heavy-duty bamboo cane, giving a bit more height than we usually aim for with our container-grown trees.

After a while you may notice the branches grow long enough to start trailing on the ground. If you don't like this you can prune the branches back by about 30cm on a mild day in the winter.

Sun Rival characteristics

• Gardening skillBeginner
• Self-fertile?Self-fertile
• Pollinating othersGood
• Pick seasonMid
• Fruit colourRed

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