Tree Tour
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Tree Tour
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Walk past a thriving eastern white pine and some bigleaf maples to the amazingly low, wide 'Pink Beauty' crab apple between Stevens Way and the Communications building. This, the only 'Pink Beauty' known in Seattle, was named for its April flowers, which make it, in bloom, the most beautiful tree of the area. In 1948 it had been received by the arboretum, then was moved to campus when the 520 freeway project gouged a hole through that park.
The variety originated at Morden Research station, Manitoba, before 1945, as one of 1,700 open pollinated hybrid seedlings of the "rosybloom crabapples" grown in an effort to obviate the undesirable magenta floral tint prevalent in the rosybloom originals. From summer into fall the tree has dark purple, marble sized fruit. The leaves have an unusual leaden deep blue-green color.