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I've recently moved to New Jersey and I encountered this tree with gorgeous red and yellow berries in the Fall. They are arranged like small cherries and are absolutely stunning from a distance and close up. All of the leaves are gone, so I can't say much more about the tree. I'm attaching a photo of the berries close up.
Thanks. You may be right, but I can't find pictures of crabapples that look similar and all of the descriptions indicate a fall fruit that is one color. Also, these trees are in a natural (unplanted) setting (reservation/preserve). Thus, it's unlikely to be some fancy cultivar.
I'll try to go back to the reservation and take pics at a distance. From what I recall, the plant doesn't have a single central trunk, but has multiple branches that form near the base of the tree. The overall shape is somewhat fan-like...or maybe a better way to describe its appearance is to say that it resembles a piece of broccoli in shape. Not terribly helpful, I know. I wish I could sketch it...
The fruit's most likely not really two different colors--the yellow ones are probably just less ripe and will turn redder with time. If you go back there, see if you can find any leaves left on it, being able to see the leaf shape might help. The multiple branches from the base could be from suckers--if a crabapple is growing in someone's yard and starts to make suckers they'll get pruned off, but in the wild there's nobody there to do that so it can grow however it wants.
The crabapple Indian Magic has fruit that starts out red and turns to a golden yellow, and has multiple trunks...the one you saw may be a parent plant . I am sure places like South Mountain Reservation would have lots of native trees.
OK. You've all convinced me. It's definitely a crabapple. Thanks for the explanation on the fruit colors and un-trimmed suckers. I hope I can figure out the specific variety. I find it so stunning, I want to put one in my yard (oh, the birds I'll see!).
If it is found in a preserve, and was unlikely to have been humanly-planted, it probably is a seedling resulting from a bird dropping. There certainly are a lot of crabapples planted in residential and other landscapes that birds feed on.
Multiple trunks may be due to previous comments, or deer browse, or dieback from drought, and many more possibilities. There are some who say single stem crabapples (or apples) are only due to human influence and that all natively growing individuals would be multistemmed.
'Indian Magic' crabapple is a 1969 introduction by the late Bob Simpson of Vincennes, IN (originator of 'Winter Red' winterberry, 'Winter King' hawthorn, and a host of other fine ornamental plants). He would have selected plants like this from seedling trial blocks or from wild bird-sown plants of the region. It is one of the forms that has some variation over time in its fruit color, but I agree more with ecrane's summation that the lighter color is due to immaturity, or even due to pest influence retarding maturation.
