For a brief time each year, flowering trees grace the landscape and dazzle us. The red buds, weeping cherries, magnolias and flowering crabapples chase away the gray of winter with bursts of pink, crimson and white.
Flowering trees make the morning and evening commutes more enjoyable. They scent the air on our evening walks and welcome us to drive through old established neighborhoods.
For the past half-century, flowering crabapple trees have lined some West Side streets, due to industrious children of the 1950s and 60s. School children from Washington Elementary peddled the crabapple trees door to door.
One of those kids was Dottie Nespeca. She recalled that the tree sales were part of a fundraising effort for Washington School. Her mom helped her sell the trees.
“There’s one just down the street, another one on the corner and my parents had one in the back yard,” Nespeca said. Some of her trees and those sold by her neighborhood friends still beautify the area above Lake Glacier.
For the past half-century, flowering crabapple trees have lined some West Side streets, due to industrious children of the 1950s and 60s. School children from Washington Elementary peddled the crabapple trees door to door. (Metro Monthly electronic image by Christine Davidson)Jeff and Leslie Limbian also sold crabapple trees in their Shawnee Trail neighborhood. Their mom is Anita Limbian.
“You always buy what your children sell and this neighborhood was filled with kids who went to Washington,” Anita Limbian said. Her block has about three of the 12 original trees. “I like them, I just like the color. The deep pink, the street was filled with deep pink.”
Only one of the original trees remains on her property; she said her husband wanted to take it down. “He’s not a tree person but I convinced him not to, so we just cut back some of the dying branches.”
The remaining crabapples on the next block of East Shawnee Trail are barely holding on: broken branches, missing limbs, a target for pileated woodpeckers. In winter, they show off a gnarled beauty but still brighten up the street in spring. Some of the other pink crabapple trees that line South Schenley from Volney Rogers to St. Christine’s are waning, too.
Dave Sturtz and his work crew from the city of Youngstown removed a crabapple on South Schenley in mid-April.
“The homeowner called us, Sturtz said. “This tree only has a few good branches left. It will probably be dead in two years.” He said many of the trees planted in the devil strips are dying from old age.
Fred Shepherd of Pettiti Gardens said 50 years is a long time for a crabapple to survive. “Most have a 15-20 year lifespan,” he said. Shepherd said the newer trees with names like Prairie Fire, Brandywine and Sargent Tina are disease-resistant but he cautions, “It’s just like a child or a pet or anything, you still have to feed and take care of them. People forget about them. It’s like the first couple years they are thrilled and then they forget about it. . . . And that’s when things a start to decline. People don’t keep up with them.”
Shepherd understands why the crabapples are so popular.
“They get this beautiful burst of color; it’s one of the first things that flower in spring. It is so profuse, it’s just massive blooms all over them and that’s why people really like them – spring color.”
But the display can be short-lived. “If it stays nice and cool, the flowers can last two or two and a half weeks but if we get a downpour, it knocks all the petals off,” he said.
Better Homes and Gardens list 32 varieties of flowering crabapples. TreeHelp.Com… calls flowering crabapples, “Jewels of the Landscape.”
Anita Limbian couldn’t agree more. She’s planted several crabapples to edge her side lawn. “They are beautiful in their prime,” she said.
© 2017 Metro Monthly. All rights reserved.
