Is Siberian Apricot a Woody Plant? An Article to Help You Get to Know the Siberian Apricot

The Family and Genus of the Siberian Apricot

The Siberian apricot is a shrub or rarely a small tree, a plant of the genus Prunus in the rose family (Rosaceae).

Other Names for the Siberian Apricot

The Siberian apricot is also called small peach red, Yu mei, and Yuye luanzhi.

The Origin of the Siberian Apricot

It is produced in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Shandong, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and regions. It is planted in most parks throughout China. It also occurs in Soviet Central Asia.

Morphological Characteristics of the Siberian Apricot

The Siberian apricot is a shrub or rarely a small tree, 2-3 m tall, with spreading branches and a large number of short small branchlets; the branchlets are gray, the one-year-old branches are grayish brown, hairless or slightly covered with short soft hairs when young, and the winter buds are relatively short and small, 2-3 mm long.

The branches of the Siberian apricot are purplish brown, and the leaves are broadly elliptic to obovate, with a 3-lobed apex and serrate margins.

The flowers of the Siberian apricot range from single to double, purplish red, 1-2 borne in the leaf axils, with a flowering period in April.

The fruit of the Siberian apricot is red, nearly spherical, and hairy.

Main Varieties of the Siberian Apricot

Single-flowered Siberian apricot: bears pink or pinkish white flowers, single-petaled; the flowers are small, with 5 sepals and 5 petals, similar to the wild Siberian apricot, and the branchlets are reddish brown.

Double-flowered Siberian apricot: bears reddish brown flowers, the flowers are large, double, numerous and dense, with more than 10 sepals, and both the sepals and the pedicels have a red flush. In the double-flowered Siberian apricot, the branch bark is mostly cracked. Because its flowers are large, it is also called "large-flowered Siberian apricot" it is a variety with relatively high ornamental value, but its flowering time is later than that of other varieties.

Semi-double-flowered Siberian apricot: pink flowers, semi-double, with more than 10 sepals and petals each. The small branches of the plant are reddish brown, and it is relatively widely cultivated in gardens and courtyards.

Curved-branch Siberian apricot: the flowers are small and densely borne on the branches, the flower color is rose-purple red, semi-double or double, with 10 sepals, of which 5 are triangular and 5 are lanceolate. The small branches of the plant are purplish red, smooth, and it flowers earlier than other varieties, with a flowering period of about 10 days.

Truncate-leaved Siberian apricot: the flowers are pink. The characteristic of the truncate-leaved Siberian apricot is that the front end of the leaf is broadly truncate, nearly triangular; it is strongly cold-resistant, and is commonly cultivated in Northeast China.

Purple-leaved large-flowered double Siberian apricot: a new variety bred by our nursery; the leaf color is bright purplish red, the flowers are double, and the flowers are mostly pink. It is the newest variety of large-flowered double Siberian apricot.

The Flower Language of the Siberian Apricot

Fate, the meeting of souls