The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Crab apples Open your eyes to the variety and versatility of these ancient wonders
CRAB apples punch above their weight. After providing a cloud of white, pink or red blossom in spring, they’re now adorned with clusters of shiny red, orange or yellow fruits. The display will continue long after their autumn leaves have fallen.
This splash undoubtedly cheers up the garden at a time when colour is in short supply, but, as well as making jelly, you could use some of this fruit harvest as decoration in or surrounding the house.
Everyone wants to brighten up the place at Christmas, but that’s two months away. Ignore the Christmas goodies in garden centres and focus on the here and now. Follow the example of our continental neighbours and celebrate Halloween with a harvest display from the garden. Other Europeans dip into their garden treasures of flowers, fruits, berries and grasses throughout the year, not just at Christmas.
Add crab apples to the berries you are using from the garden just now – rose hips, barberries and hawthorn, to name a few.
Cut long twigs holding plenty of apples and snip off any leaves. Spray the apples to keep them fresh and arrange the twigs in a vase you can use as a table decoration or to adorn a window sill. You could also make a crab apple wreath, mixing fruits to create a subtly striking effect.
Golden Hornet is an ideal choice for these decorations. The tree grows to around three to four metres and is crammed with so many small, golden fruits that you can hardly see the branches, even when they’ve lost their leaves. With appealing orange apples, splashed with pink and red, Jelly King sits between Golden Hornet and the largish, deep red fruits of Harry Baker.
The key is to find a variety to suit your space. There’s no shortage of different types in good garden centres or from specialist nurseries. Crabs usually grow slowly, with some taking up to 50 years to reach their full height. But grow they will, so ca’ canny and be sure to prune back when they get taller and wider than you want.
Many traditional crab apples, Malus sylvestris, may reach six metres or more. And if, like me, you have the space, you’ll find they make an ideal climbing frame for a rose or clematis. With their own spring blossom, followed by rose and clematis flowers, and ending up swathed in fruit right into winter, you couldn’t ask for more.
My mature crab apple grows close to the orchard, partly because it flowers over a long period, so helps to pollinate the other apple trees. As an ancestor of all the eaters and cookers we’ve just been harvesting, it couldn’t be better placed.
A century ago, however, it was suggested that modern apples were not descended from the ancient crab apple. The Russian botanist, Nikolai Vavilov, found and identified wild apples in Kazakhstan and he was convinced they were the ancestors of the 3,000 varieties we now enjoy. This idea was generally accepted until four years ago, when Amandine Cornille of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, showed crab apples were at least as important as the Central Asian apple, Malus sieversii, in the development of the domestic apple. Although Asian farmers had been breeding new varieties from the original wild apple for between 3,000 and 4,000 years, traders brought them along the Silk Road to Europe. On their journey west the merchants and their camels and horses excreted the seed on their journey, the resulting trees hybridising with native crab apples. Cornille claims her research shows crab apples are just as important as their Central Asian relatives in the genetic makeup of our Cox’s Orange Pippin.