Pollinating your Apple Trees Increases your crop Size

Most apple trees need to be pollinated in order to bear fruit, and even self-fertile varieties still benefit.
However, apple and crab apple trees are very common all over the UK, even in the city, so there is a high chance that you have a suitable pollination partner in your area already, in which case you can ignore this article!

What are Pollination Partners?

Cross-pollination happens when:

• Two apple trees of different varieties are in flower at the same time
• Insects (mainly bees) are present to move the pollen from one flower to the other

Pollination groups represent flowering periods.
Trees will cross-pollinate with other trees in their own group and adjacent groups, e.g. a tree in Pollination Group C will cross-pollinate with trees in groups B, C, and D (the letters can be replaced with numbers, so Group C is the same as Group 3).

Use our easy pollination checking tool to quickly find partners for a given variety, or browse the chart below.

Tip: Choose Mixed Apple Orchards by Cropping Date

Most home growers want a mix of early and late ripening varieties, so start by choosing your trees based on their cropping period, then check their pollination groups: in most cases, they will link up anyway.

Crab Apple Trees are Perfect Partners

Crab apple trees are the best pollinators. They have long flowering periods, therefore covering most pollination groups, and make loads of pollen.
There are plenty of good options, but Malus John Downie or the bright yellow Malus Golden Hornet both make useful fruit for cooking, and are the best for an orchard owner.

Are Apple Trees Self-Fertile?

The holy grail of apple breeding is to produce a variety that pollinates itself and produces its best quality and quantity of fruit: so far, no apple is totally self fertile in the sense of achieving all those things.
A “self-fertile” tree still needs to be pollinated by another variety, although they crop reasonably well without cross-pollination.

Triploid Apple Trees

Triploid trees have totally sterile pollen: they cannot pollinate themselves or other trees. They can only be pollinated by other trees.
This means that a triploid tree needs another tree to pollinate it, and that other tree also needs a pollination partner, since the triploid tree cannot return the favour.

Bees make Pollination happen

Thousands of insects get involved in pollination, but bees (including all the wild solitary and bumblebees) do about 90% of the work: no bees usually means poor pollination.
Everything that attracts & support your local bees is good for your apple trees.
Avoid neonicotinoid based pesticides, and provide habits for solitary and bumblebees – even better, get a honey bee hive.

A self-fertile tree in a closed greenhouse will need hand pollination to move the pollen around the flower.
By the same token, apple breeders use fabric bags to keep insects off the flowers, so that the breeder decides which varieties to cross-pollinate by hand.

Chart of Apple Tree Pollination Groups

Can apple trees pollinate pear trees?

No, only apple trees can pollinate other apple trees, not pears, wild pears, nor any other fruit species.

Some pear hybrids are publicised as “papples” or “pearples”, which sounds like they are apple-pear crosses, but only their shape is similar. They are in fact crosses between different European and Asian pear species.

How many apple varieties do I need to pollinate an Orchard?

In theory, an orchard needs 7 varieties to reliably cover pollination groups A to G, with one tree in each pollination groups, and Bountiful covering groups A to C.

If your orchard is remote, or if you are planting either very early flowering (Pollination Group A) or very late flowering (Groups G or H) apples, then use our fruit pollination tool to find a partner; even self fertile apples benefit from cross pollination.