Newport Flowering Plum          PROO-nus

• Deciduous tree, small, 15-20 ft (4.5-6 m), similar width, twiggy and rounded, spreading branches.  Leaves alternate, simple, bronzy-red when young and changing to dark reddish purple later, turning a reddish color in fall.  Flowers perfect, small (ca. 15 mm wide), pale pink to dull white, appear shortly before the leaves, but soon compete with the much darker emerging leaves.  Purple fruit, about 2.5 cm diam, in summer; however, it does not set fruit in Seattle (Jacobson, 1992).
• Sun.  Any average soil, well-drained.  Prune after flowering to keep trees vigorous.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 4, reportedly better in Zone 5,  one of the more hardy flowering plum cultivars and usually the last one to flower.
• Developed at the University of Minnesota from a cross of P. ‘Omaha’ × P. cerasifera ‘Pissardii’ and introduced in 1923.  Named after Newport, Minnesota.  The parent ‘Omaha’ has a diverse Prunus background, including the selections P. americana ‘Quaker’, P. nigra ‘Harrison's Peach’ and P. salicina ‘Abundance’.  Therefore, because of its complex parentage, ‘Newport’ should not be designated as a cultivar of Prunus cerasifera, but simply Prunus ‘Newport’ (Jacobson, 1992).
• Portland, Oregon: Washington Park, Viet Nam Veterans Memorial.