Description: Small tree with low-domed crown, usually one sided; dense twisting branches.

Height: to 10 m

Diameter: 0.3-1 m

Leaves: Elliptic, abruptly acuminate, cuneate or rounded, slightly oblique, crenate-serrate; deep green above, whitish green and pubescent beneath. 5-6 × 3-4 cm. Petiole 2.5 cm grooved, densely pubescent, dark crimson towards base.

Shoots: Dark purple above, pale brown beneath, ribbed, with some greyish down later shed, often thorny. Bud 4-5 mm, dark purple fringed with grey hairs.

Bark: Dark brown, deeply and finely cracked into small square plates.

Flowers: With leaves in late May, white, faintly pink.

Fruit: Nearly globular, 2.5 × 2.8 cm depressed each end, glossy pale green speckled with large white spots, flushed or speckled red in autumn.

Habitat: In broadleaved woods and on plains to 1400m. Very rugged, indifferent to subsoil. In Britain it is frequent to rare in hedgerows and copses.

Range: Throughout Europe except the far north and west, also into SW Asia.

Some trees, especially if the flowers are very pink, may be seedlings from domestic apples (Malus pumila), in which Malus sylvestris is a major contributor. Domesticated varieties do not breed true and often revert close to the wild species when raised from seed.

Crab apples make very good fertilisers for domestic varieties of apple, helping to ensure their crop. Crab apples are not good to eat, but make excellent jelly, either on their own or with other fruit.

Information: Mitchell (1988), MacDonald (1984)

Source: Two existing trees, one on the property, one in a boundary hedge actually on the far side of the fence. Two new plantings from Weasdale Nurseries, Newbiggin-on-Lune.

Purchased: Early 1994 at 2-3'

Planted: 1994.04.28 in Eurostrip.

Notes: There is a large specimen at the north end of the U.S. strip, at the fence corner at the north end. As its flowers are indeed very pink (see photographs), it seems probable that this was from a domestic apple pip. A very similar (though smaller) tree lies just outside the property on the west, its branches merged with an adjacent Bay Willow, the two forming a good chunk of the hedge.

Progress: the two new plantings have established well, and are now about 1.5m, despite growong in slightly unfavourable, rather shaded positions. When the tree shelter was removed from one of these which was showing a tilt owing to the stake having rotted, it was found to have grown adventitious roots from many points on the lowest half metre of its trunk - this suggests that air-layering would be a very easy way to propagate.

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