Tree of the Week: Purple Plum

Good morning. Pieter Severynen, who brings us Tree of the Week, is under the weather this week. We wish him a speedy recovery. In the meantime, from the L.A. Land archives, one of Pieter's greatest hits from last spring.

"Did you know that the city of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power gives away trees? Visit Trees for a Green LA or call 1-800-GreenLA. At the various tree giveaways in the city, the Purple Leaf Plum is usually the first one to go. Most people fall in love with its deep, dark, purple foliage.

"The tree is 'Prunus cerasifera ‘Krauter Vesuvius’ -– ‘K.V.’ Purple-leaf plum. Carl Krauter of Bakersfield introduced this darkest of the purple-leafed plums in 1957, hence the name. This well-behaved, vase-shape to rounded, small tree, 15 to 20 feet high, 10 to 15 feet wide, loves full sun to part shade. Single pink flowers adorn the bare branches around February, at the end of its winter leafless period. It produces little to no fruit, takes dry conditions, and has few problems. Branches have a tendency to all emanate from one spot on the trunk, so prune the tree at an early age to make later maintenance easier. If you find it's in-your-face leaf color too gaudy, try one of its more subtle cousins such as P.x blireiana (the ‘x’ means it is a hybrid) or P.c.‘Thundercloud’."

Thanks, Pieter. Get well soon.
Thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: L.A. Times

Comments

[mommy]

innocuous comment, but i love this tree! nice shape & color.

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

I was going to read the Sunday comics, but thought it was funnier to read the median prices in tihs blog.

As for trees, there is a moving story in the London Telegraph about the Tree Man in Indonesia. The poor man's body is bark-like, his feet are like tree roots, apparently from some wart virus infection. Hope the doctor from Maryland can cure him.

[Uncle Billy Climbs Mont Pelerin]

Is "noxious" the direct opposite of innocuous? We don't say nocuous, so I'm guessing it might be.

We can meditate on things like that here, right? In the shade of the purple plum tree?

Here's another beautiful thing upon which we would do well to meditate: Paul Krugman's referree-ing of the Lord Keynes - Milton Friedman smackdown.

Laissez-Faire? As passe now as Chemin-de-Fer. Here we find out that Laissez-Faire was really, really not fair. A tour of our economy from the great depression to Japan to Enron to $400k fixer uppers in Highland Park -- through the eyes of 3 really big-eyed thnkers:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19857