Last week, we posted “Crabdronia: BYGL Readers Ask and Receive”, a bygl-alert (https://bygl.osu.edu/index.php/node/1551) with a drone video of the Crablandia plot at OSU’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, Ohio taken on May 2.
On Friday, virtualoso drone gurus Scott and Danae Wolfe directed another droneo, mere hours before Secrest’s 26 degree F, Saturday morning frost. This then is the last Crablandia “peak” peek for this year. Here is the link:
All was not lost. As noted in the earlier alert, there is a 3-4 week range for first and full blooms of different crabapple taxa, so damage from the frost (and we may get another one or two the next two night/mornings) varies depending upon flower development for that crabapple taxon.
This is much like what orchardists and berry growers must contend with each year: just how far along, just how susceptible to frost damage, just how low did it go and for how long are their different fruit crops in their location of Ohio.
So, that is a bit of what we saw in Crablandia and surrounding roadside Secrest crabapples on Sunday morning. Though the Crablandia peak was cut short by frost this year, it was bound to happen soon anyway with a string of 70 degree days due later this week and next. And, the frost does not damage the tree after all, though that is sometimes beside the point when fruit crops are damaged.
At any rate, now that crabapples begin their move away from flowers to foliage, form, and fruit finery, it is also important to remember that other joys are just beginning.
