Amelanchier species

[David Nicholson]

Does anyone know please if there is an Amelanchier species of dwarf form, not much more than 1 meter full height?

[mark smyth]

David I'm not sure about 1m but around 2m yes. The garden centre I used to work in had a small-ish one

[Stephenb]

I had an Amelanchier alnifolia var pumila from one of the seed exchanges a few years back- I think this is supposedly a dwarf form, but it died on me before it reached 5 cm...

[Paddy Tobin]

David,

Any of the amelanchiers I know are medium to large shrubs to small trees but Hillier lists A. stolonifera - "A small to medium-sized suckering shrub forming a dense thicket of erect stems. Flowers in short erect racemes in May as the white hairy young leaves emerge. North America. Introduced 1883."

Guy Sternberg & Jim Wilson in "Native Trees for North American Landscapes" describe it: "Running shadbush (A. stolonifera) is a low, spreading species popular in landscape usage."

Dirr lists a cultivar called, 'Prince William' as about 8 feet tall. 'Spring Glory' as 8 - 10feet and describes A. stolonifera (Running Serviceberry) as a small 4 - 6 foot high stoloniferous shrub which forms small thickets of stiff, erect stems." Dirr also lists a cultivar of A. alnifolia called 'Regent' which grows 4 - 6 feet.

Paddy

[cohan]

loks like you'd need another species for really small ones, but as paddy notes, there are some shortish cultivars of alnifolia, bred for easy harvesting--see this page which shows a couple in the 5-8foot range (wild plants around here are around 15-20 feet at a guess, though i did see a site where they were mostly not much over a metre due to regular prunig by deer/moose!)..
http://www.dnagardens.com/catalogue.htm#Saskatoon

[Lesley Cox]

I once had A. pumila which was possibly the one you refer to, Stephen. It reached about 80 cms before I left it in a previous garden but I don't think it had grown much in the few years prior to that. It had white flowers, black fruit and good autumn colour.

[Paddy Tobin]

David,

Cohan has the solution to having a small amelanchier - buy any sized cultivar at all and keep deer.

By the way, A. alnifolia has the advantage of being a tidier growth habit, multi-stemmed and more upright in habit.

Paddy

[cohan]

David,

Cohan has the solution to having a small amelanchier - buy any sized cultivar at all and keep deer.

By the way, A. alnifolia has the advantage of being a tidier growth habit, multi-stemmed and more upright in habit.

Paddy

lol---i think a pair of shears might be a better solution overall
the deer and moose do prune saskatoons, dogwoods, sorbus, cherries etc in our yard over winter; of course they cant be counted on to do it the way you'd like... there is one A alnifolia growing near the driveway that managed to grow out of their reach to 15 feet or so, but they are pruning around the first half, so the shape is a little odd..
i do expect small species would be suckering bushes, not at all tree shaped..

[David Nicholson]

Mmmmm, food for thought and thanks for the comments so far. The situation is that I'm removing (or as the other half of the family would have it "failing yet to remove!!") a very bulky Spirea about 2 meters high which has reached the end of it's useful life. I would like to replace it with a small tree (around 1 meter) that looks interesting all year round and preferably has autumn colour. As I want to underplant chosen tree with small bulbs I would prefer a species that grows on a short leg. Ideas please?