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Julian Sutton (species), Nick Dunn (cultivars) (2021)
Recommended citation
Sutton, J. & Dunn, N. (2021), 'Malus × gloriosa' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Small tree with round or spreading crown. Leaves red-green; flowers single, purple from red-purple buds, 4 cm in diameter; fruit brown-red to red, 3 cm in diameter. (Fiala 1994).
USDA Hardiness Zone 4-8
RHS Hardiness Rating H6
Most unhelpfully, the Lemoine nursery of Nancy, France chose to give this Latin binomial to a hybrid between M. × scheideckeri and M. sieversii f. niedzwetzkyana, sometime before 1931 (Fiala 1994). Nowadays a simple cultivar name would have been applied. It is, then, a four-way cross with genes from M. baccata, toringo, prunifolia, and sieversii. Fiala (1994) condemns it as an alternate, light bloomer and subject to severe scab. Not surprisingly, it is now seen very rarely. We have been able to trace specimens only at the Arnold Arboretum, one obtained from Lemoine in 1956 (49 cm basal diameter in 2015), and others propagated from it (Arnold Arboretum 2020).
Based on its claimed parentage, the cultivar ‘Echtermeyer’ is sometimes rather speculatively placed here (Fiala 1994).