Any Tree Experts?? Tree Identification Question??

[MICHELLE H.]

Hello all,

Hoping that someone here can help identify a tree that we had in our yard, that was killed a few days ago, when we had 45 mile an hour winds all day, that blew it over.

It was a nice little tree, and would like to get another one, even though we don't know what type of tree it was? I think it may have been a some type of "flowering pear" or "flowering crabapple" tree, but not positive.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the tree when it had its leaves or flowers on it, so I will describe it the best I can.

The tree was roughly about 10 feet tall in height, and roughly 5-10 feet wide. The tree would NOT bloom with any kind of White flowers in the spring. Actually, the tree would look dead throughout the spring, usually until about June, when it would then start to get its Green leaves. There would be no growth of any kind, usually until mid June for some reason, when the Green leaves would appear. Then around the end of June, and into July, the tree would get bright Pink flowers. It wouldn't be huge clusters of flowers, but Pink flowers scattered throughout the tree, which attracted many different types of bees. Then around the end of August and September, the flowers would star to turn Brown, and fall off the trees.

When the flowers fell off, it wasn't like just the pedals of the flower falling off, the WHOLE flower would fall off the tree.

The flowers would fall off in the driveway ( where the tree was located near ), and when you ran over the flowers with the car, the flowers would get stuck to, and stain the driveway all the time.

The branches of the tree grew in an upward direction, much like that of a "flowering pear" or "flowering crabapple" tree, but this tree had no fruit or crabapples that grew on it.

Also, "flowering pears", turn all pure White in the Spring, and this tree didn't do that. It remained completely bare until June, when Green leaves were always the first things to appear.

The bark of the tree was quite rough, and had the "diamond pattern" in it. The branches were quite thin, and would break off easily, during high winds, or ice storms.

The only thing that was similar to the "flowering pear" and "flowering crabapple" trees, was the way the branches grew in a upward motion, like in the picture below.

We asked a neighbor in his 80's who lives on our street, and has been here all his life when the original homeowners planted it, if he knew what type of tree it was, but he didn't know. All he knew is that the tree was about 30 years old.

I have tried doing searches on the net, at Google and Yahoo, but have been unable to find this type of tree!?

Here is a EXAMPLE picture below, of the shape of the tree, and how the branches grew in an upright form, similar to this one:

Any help telling me what kind of tree this might have been would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

[gardengal]

Most crabapples are not very upright once established in the landscape

- only very young trees tend to have this habit. Once they've got a few years on them, they spread out to form a rounded, even spreading, crown. Based on your description only, it's gong to be very hard to nail down an ID. I'd suspect it was some sort of late spring/early summer flowering shrub, rather than a tree - many shrubs can grow easily into tree-like proportions and 10' is extremely small for anything but a dwarf tree (which is also possible). Without a photo to confirm, I'd suggest you look at things like weigela or kolkwitzia. Possibly even a flowering dogwood, but 10' is pretty darn tiny for one of those. And are you sure the flowers held on until fall?? That's pretty unusual for any tree or shrub to retain flowers for that long a period.

[Denise in NH]

Michelle, Look up Rose of Sharon. Everything in your description fits the Rose of Sharons in my yard. They come in many colors, growth of branches is upright, starts leafing out later than other trees, flowers fall off intact after turning brown, etc.

Denise

[kate]

Crepe myrtle? They're about the last to leaf out in TN.

[brooklyn1]

It would help to know where you are located.

Try looking through pictures at some of the on line plant sellers, perhaps you will see something that looks like your tree. There are many small flowering trees. Perhaps yours is a variety of red bud.

Look here:

[MICHELLE H.]

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the great responses! One thing that stinks, is that while searching on Google, I found out that the "Flowering Pear" tree has over

800 different known varieties!!! YIKES!!!!