Plant · P-368

Crabapple

Malus sylvestris

Crabapple is the wild ancestor of the cultivated apple, grown for hard, acid fruit that makes excellent jelly, cider and preserves once softened by frost, plus a red-to-yellow bark dye and firewood from a tree that shrugs off hard cutting into a hedgerow. Its blossom draws an unusually large crowd of insects - over ninety associated species have been recorded on one tree - making it one of the strongest spring insectary trees around. It needs real winter chill to fruit well and struggles through long stretches of extreme summer heat, since it has no low-chill selections bred into it the way the cultivated apple does.