Oh I believe you, I just didn’t know crab apples could be so tiny. 
1 Like
there are approximately 70 species in the genus Malus : doumeri, toringoides, trilobata, floribunda, tschonoskii, sieboldii… are part of the small fruit apple trees that are often planted in park in Europe.
They also have the particularity of being often smaller and having very abundant blooms, and fruits that remain all winter suspended which is good for birds.
these trees are very good for pollination of fruit trees and have a large unexplored potential for dwarfing rootstock.
A landrace with Malus domestica, would surely also transfer interesting characteristics (resistance to diseases, new tastes, small size, more abundant blooms…)
3 Likes
In our old house, we had a crabapple tree with tiny crabapples. They were really tart, but when made into jam, the jam had a neat flavor: a mix of apple and tangerine. The fruits were still good, just rather mushy, in spring.
One spring morning, I heard lots of noise outside, so I walked outside to look. The tree was FULL of a huge flock of birds, gobbling up all the leftover fruit and twittering joyously to each other.
I was glad the wildlife were so happy. 
1 Like
This is a fantastic feature! I was just listening to an Instagram reel the other day where a lady was discussing planting elderberry in between apple trees. The elderberry with its multitude of blooms helps ensure greater pollination for the apples due to an increase in pollinators in the area. I imagine if we interspersed these tiny crabs 
with the regular apples, it might help them as well. 
We already intend to interplant doing something what Mark Shepard (and many others I’m sure) have talked about like this:
And yes, the inclusion of these tiny apple trees would be mostly for the wildlife. I view this less as “our forest” and more as “the forest we steward”. 
They were all here first, after all.
2 Likes
this is what apple growers in Europe do, a small ornamental apple tree at the end of each row to attract bees and help pollinate.
Sometimes if the rows are very long it puts some through the apple trees of production
1 Like
I wonder if anything with lots of flowers in between apple trees would increase pollination the same way? If so, I bet a lot of fruit bushes and many perennial vegetables that flower in spring would have a similar benefit.
(Laugh.) Of course, if you already have sufficient pollination, overpollination may be something to avoid! I recall in one of Stefan Sobkowiak’s videos (The Permaculture Orchard), he mentioned that he got rid of the honeybees he was keeping in his orchard because they were overpollinating all his trees, and he had to start thinning the fruit, which was extra work he didn’t want to have to go to. Seems like a good problem, but still a problem! 
1 Like
On the other hand I remember reading that Taraxacum in apple orchards tends to decrease the pollinators activity on the apple trees, since they prefer the Taraxacum. So it could also be a good strategy to plant early flowering plants to attract pollinators but have not many plants that bloom at the same time as the apple trees.
1 Like
Wild apple trees also have the advantage of attracting pollinators like some other flowering plants but especially to be very fertile. They emit a lot of pollen for a long time that pollinates well the apples of productions what would not do a flower of another kind. Indeed the other side of the coin is a lot of abundance and sometimes clear… but which will complain much fruit!
2 Likes