John Downie Crabapple Trees

Malus John Downie

Malus John Downie crabapple trees are attractive and heavy cropping plants that produce some of the best yields of crabapples for use in the kitchen. They are commonly planted in orchards and their narrow canopy makes them a great specimen tree for a small garden. John Downie has abundant white blossom in mid-late spring and good red-gold autumn colour. It is a vigorous tree, but is naturally tidy. The long, conical, bright red-orange fruit are some of the prettiest of any crabapple tree. They can either be left on the branches for their ornamental value, or used to make crabapple jelly, apple sauce or pressed and blended with the juice of other apples to make cider.
John Downie is one of the best pollinators for apple orchards, along with Golden Hornet. It can reach a height of about 8 metres.

Browse our variety of crabapple trees or see our full range of trees for sale.

How Standard Trees are Measured:
All the plants in the ornamental trees section are graded as standards, which means that they are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level (basically, their trunk's waist measurement). They aren't measured by their height, which will vary. So, a 6/8 standard has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8 centimetres and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10 centimetres around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
Standard trees are 2 - 3.5 metres tall (on average) when they arrive; they are the most mature trees that you can buy from us. We cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.

History & uses of Malus John Downie

This tree was bred in the 1870's by Mr E. Holmes and he named it after his friend, who was a Scottish nurseryman. It has won both the RHS Award of Garden Merit and and Award of Merit for displays of its cut flowers.