Sugar Tyme Crabapple

Sugar Tyme® is one of the most widely planted crabapples in Puget Sound landscapes and consistently shows up at regional nurseries (Sky, Wells Medina, Magnolia Garden Center, Furney's). The cultivar's combination of good-to-excellent disease resistance, upright moderate size (18 ft × 15 ft), exceptionally persistent fragrant white bloom, and bright red fruit that holds through winter makes it a defensible default choice for residential yards, street tree planting strips, and commercial landscape installations. The upright oval form is a useful contrast to the more typical rounded crabapple silhouette — it fits narrower spaces than ‘Donald Wyman’ (24 ft spread) while offering similar white-flower-with-red-fruit aesthetic. Disease resistance is rated Good on scab and fire blight per JFS — not the absolute best (that distinction belongs to ‘Adirondack' and 'Prairifire’) but reliably tolerable in maritime PNW conditions. The persistent fruit is genuinely useful for winter wildlife forage; birds often leave Sugar Tyme fruit until alternate sources are depleted, providing late-season forage in January and February. Bloom timing is mid- season (~220-290 GDD50). For PNW homeowners walking through a nursery looking for "an upright crabapple with persistent fruit and reliable disease resistance," Sugar Tyme is the standard recommendation.

— Chris Welch, ISA Certified Arborist