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Crab Apple - Malus sylvestris
Shrub or tree to 10 metres. Flowers pinkish or white 30 to 40 mm in rounded clusters, fragrant. Fruit the familiar apple but smaller than the domestic apple, usually yellow or yellow/green. Under surfaces of mature leaves and the pedicels are hairless.
Orchard Apple (Malus pumila or domestica) is similar but has hairy leaf undersurfaces and pedicels and usually has larger fruit - however, the two species can be very hard to tell apart. Self-set orchard apples often have small yellowish sour fruits.
Leaves glabrous when mature; pedicels and outside of calyx glabrous
Photos showing underside of mature leaves, pedicels (flower-stalks) and calyx. It is not possible to verify this from general photos or from fruits
Woods and hedgerows.
May to June.
Deciduous.
Quite common in most of Britain.
Once thought to be quite common in Leicestershire and Rutland - In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 494 of the 617 tetrads. Now thought to have been over-recorded instead of orchard apple, which is commonly naturalised
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Species profile
- Common names
- Crab Apple
- Species group:
- Trees, Shrubs & Climbers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Rosales
- Family:
- Rosaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 81
- First record:
- 11/05/1992 (John Mousley;Steve Grover)
- Last record:
- 19/03/2022 (Nicholls, David)
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% of records within its species group
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Latest images
Latest records
Bohemannia pulverosella
The larvae create a distinctive blotch mine in the leaves of Apple. The larva cuts an exit hole on the underside of the leaf, which distinguishes the mine from that of Ectoedemia atricollis.
Rosy Apple Aphid
The aphid Dysaphis plantaginea induces yellowish crumpled leaf galls on apple in spring. The aphids within can be green or red.
Rosy Leaf-curling Aphid agg.
The Dysaphis devecta species group includes three species: D. devecta, D. anthrisci and D. chaerophylli. All members of the D. devecta group roll the edges of apple leaves and turn them red to produce a characteristic gall.
Woolly Apple Aphid
Eriosoma lanigerum wingless females (apterae) are purple, red or brown and are the most often recorded form of this aphid. They are usually found on their secondary host – Apple - causing lumpy irregular galls on branches, which become woody and persist after the aphids have left. The aphid is a considered to be a pest of orchards and can cause damage to the tree.
The aphids are covered in thick white flocculent (woolly) wax. This is produced by distinct wax glands on the head and along the thorax and abdomen. The body length of Eriosoma lanigerum apterae is 1.2 to 2.6 mm.