Product Description
*** Generally ships from mid December- April. ***
(We ship to colder states beginning in late March and April unless requested earlier.).
Purple leaf sand cherry is a beautiful flowering ornamental perfect for any landscape. It is valued for its eye-catching purple foliage, which will grace your yard from early spring through autumn when the leaves turn a stunning bronze-green. It is fast-growing, easy-to-care-for, and adapts to a wide range of soil and light conditions though it is not a long-living tree.
Key Characteristics and Uses
- Foliage and Flowers: Leaves emerge a vibrant crimson-purple in spring and maintain their color, turning a bronze-red in the fall. Small, fragrant, pinkish-white flowers bloom in early spring, offering a beautiful contrast to the dark foliage.
- Fruit and Wildlife: The shrub produces small, blackish-purple fruits (drupes) in late summer that are edible for humans (sweet-tart flavor) and a favorite food source for birds and small mammals. Its dense branching also provides good nesting spots for birds.
- Landscape Use: It is highly valued as an accent plant, a specimen shrub, or for creating a colorful hedge or border. Its moderate, upright, and spreading growth habit makes it versatile, and it can even be trained into a small tree form.
- Hardiness: The ‘Cistena plum’ purple leaf sand cherry is very hardy and can be grown in USDA Hardiness Zones 2 through 8.
- Maintenance: It prefers full sun (at least 6 hours daily for optimal color) and well-drained soil, though it is adaptable to various soil types and urban conditions. Once established, it is drought-tolerant and relatively low-maintenance, requiring occasional pruning in late winter or early spring to maintain shape.
- Plant purple leaf sand cherry in a location with full to partial sun and moist but well-drained soil.
- Water purple leaf sand cherry regularly until established and during periods of dry weather.
- Prune purple leaf sand cherry in the spring after the bloom to maintain the oval shape of the shrub and keep it at the desired height
