Plant · P-370

Southern Crabapple

Malus angustifolia

Southern crabapple opens the pollinator calendar early, with fragrant, violet-scented pink flowers from February through May, well before most other trees have anything to offer bees. Its fall fruit and dense thickets feed and shelter an unusually wide range of wildlife - deer, raccoon, opossum, skunk, fox, quail and more - while the small, hard, pear-shaped fruit is too harsh to eat raw but makes good cider, jelly and preserves. It suckers into thickets on top of bird-sown seed, and its wood is hard and heavy enough for tool handles, but its real weakness is a strong susceptibility to disease in humid conditions, so it needs open air movement and room rather than a tight, crowded planting.