@scottfsmith
While goggling crabapples I was directed to an old GW site. I have always wondered what genes was in our wild crabapples.
Scott F Smith(6B/7A MD)
The root meaning of crabapple is wild apple and I think that is pretty accurate – it has genes of some other kind of apple (malus) which is not the standard domesticated apple from Kazakhstan. Many of the US crabs have Siberian Crab genes for example. Some definitions of the term say a crabapple is any small apple but that is an inaccurate definition in my mind. The term “lunchbox apple” is the better term for the small apples.
Scott
July 29, 2008 at 9:47PM
GW Is there any variety of crabapple that is good for raw eating?
It would be interesting for someone to test DNA of popular crab apples to determine their species if it hasn’t been already done. Some of the crabs are Malus mandshurica, Malus coronaria, Malus floribunda, Malus sargeniti, Malus sieboldii and others. Maybe some of them are just the domesticated apple Malus domestica. Maybe some here knows.
There was such a DNA study and it had some pretty interesting results. I can’t find the link now but different crabs had different wild apples in their genes, often multiple ones. Many were crosses of wild non-Kazakh apples and domesticas. Also some apples called crabs were in fact pure domestica, not many but a few.
