Prunus Royal Flame® - Ornemental Cherry Tree

The Prunus Royal Flame® is a flowering cherry with a beautiful conical silhouette that offers two highlights in the garden: clouds of small white flowers in early spring, followed by magnificent autumn foliage in shades of orange, red, and yellow. Well-branched and not too bulky, it adapts to medium-sized gardens, sheltered urban courtyards, and planting as a standalone specimen. It is a hardy, easy-to-grow ornamental small tree for full sun and in a fairly rich, well-drained, deep, and moist soil.

Belonging to the Rosaceae family, Prunus ‘Royal Flame’ is an ornamental cultivar marketed under the name ‘Mieke’; it was selected in the Netherlands by Jan van den Brandhof and distinguished with a bronze medal from the KVBC (the Royal Boskoop Horticultural Society in the Netherlands).
It is a small deciduous tree with a pyramidal-columnar habit, a uniformly ramified framework, and moderate growth; it theoretically reaches between 4 and 8 m in height and 2.50 m to 4 m in width in 20 years, but more often around 5 m by 3 m in gardens. Its young leaves emerge tinged with bronze before greening in summer, then they take on intense shades of orange, red, and yellow in autumn. The abundant flowering occurs in April. The countless small, single, white, slightly fragrant flowers, borne in clusters, show pinkish-yellow anthers visible at full bloom. Flowering may precede the unfurling of the foliage. Fruiting is not a sought-after asset in this cultivar; small drupes may appear scattered and are quickly consumed by wildlife. The bark of young shoots is reddish-brown and smooth. The root system is rather shallow and spreading as with many cherry trees; on grafted specimens, the tendency to produce suckers remains limited, but rootstock shoots may appear if the base is injured. The hardiness of this flowering cherry is rated at -20°C.
It generally shows good disease tolerance; however, like any Prunus, it can be susceptible, depending on conditions, to bacterial canker, silver leaf disease, or peach leaf curl.

Plant the Prunus Royal Flame as a standalone specimen near a terrace to enjoy its spring fragrance and end-of-season colours, or in a row along a path. Plant at its base, for example, daffodils, white tulips, and easy-to-grow hardy geraniums . You can pair it with a Japanese maple Acer palmatum ‘Sangokaku’, a flowering dogwood Cornus kousa ‘China Girl’, an ornamental crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’ or a viburnum Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’.