Value of crab apple?

In newly planted food forest I have already several varieties of apple, besides other trees. Is there a reason to include crab apple in design also? I red about it is good for cider, and can't remember what else. But cider can be made from every apple, right? So, does crab apple have any advantage over domesticated apple? Like better pollinator, more frost hardy, more tolerant to poor soil, better for cider, better for jams, wildlife, etc?

The true value of crab apples is their prolific production of pollen for your food apples, which are often poor in this field.

Like to hear more about carbapple and food apple. I thought pollination had to be with the correct apple tree.

richard valley wrote:Like to hear more about carbapple and food apple. I thought pollination had to be with the correct apple tree.

My understanding is that as long as they're blooming at the same time, you're good to go.

I think they, crabapples would be good to have in any case, wifey makes great jam with them.

Crab apples are also good for adding to cider.

I've also heard it said that they have a higher pectin content.

I know they attract a lot of pollinators.

Well, our new place needs more trees I'll start some and they'll be welcome there.

"Like to hear more about carbapple and food apple. I thought pollination had to be with the correct apple tree."

Named varieties of food apples are all clones. As with all clones their viability goes down with each generation. Crab apples are closer to the wild species, and therefore have higher fecundity, which allows them to pollinate the rest of the orchard. Around here the apple growers all have at least one crab apple amoungst their trees.

richard valley wrote:Like to hear more about carbapple and food apple. I thought pollination had to be with the correct apple tree.

The cedar waxwings absolutely tore through my neighbor's remaining crab apples (two trees worth) and then ate most of mine (four trees worth) in early November, 2011. IF for no other reason than that, it was worth it to have the big flocks visit for a few days. Nice to be able to provide for such beautiful birds. They did leave a heck of a mess but shoveling snow a couple of times has removed all the "residue".

I have two very old apples trees (variety unknown) but don't worry at all about pollination due to the pollen provided by crabapples.

My understanding is that any type of crabapple can be a good pollinator. As for other uses, that would depend on the variety of crabapple you chose. Some of them are good in pies, particularly when mixed with other types of apples, and they are good in pies. Of course, they also attract wildlife, the advantages there being a matter of perspective, i suppose.

One could break the term "crabapple" into two generalizations:
One, the native-type crabapples, or similar hybridized ornamental varieties, which are really cool and pretty trees, great for the birds, but generally only insignificantly edible, e.g you could eat them, but you may burn more calories picking out the seeds than you would gain by eating. The fruit of this type are generally garbanzo-sized or usually smaller
Two, the crabapples with larger fruit, e.g dolgo is a common one with fruit around the size of gumballs. Kids love to nibble them, and they make great jelly/jam/cider. There are also bigger varieties of crabapple, here in the south we have one called craven, that has apples almost as big as a small apple. The jelly/preserves are a delicacy around here, comparable to quince preserves. The trick with crabapples and hard cider too, is that if you naturally ferment the cider, you get something called a malo-lactic fermentation going on. Essentially, you get an apple juice that is barely drinkable it is so sour, but it finishes to a slightly tart dry type cider. Very yummy. Actually most seedling apples are a bit crabby from my experience, and in a historical sense were used for alcohol production.

we share a crabapple tree with our neighbor. The blooms are very nice right now, lots of pollinators come by. Lots of birds. When the apples drop, I collect them, mash them and they fuel my compost pile quite spectacularly.

Curculio is attracted to, among other things, "lush-leafed edible crab apples", (source The Holistic Orchard) thus they could be used as trap trees. This strategy probably makes more sense in community scale food production systems vs. home.

"Crab apple" is a blanket term, so I believe the use of a crab apple depends on its species (there are around 35). The crab apples native to Croatia might be completely different from the ones I've encountered in Michigan.

The only crab apples I've ever eaten were growing in my grandpa's yard. They were small, green, and sour as heck! I'm 95% sure they were Malus coronaria, the so-called "sweet" crab apple, which is native to Michigan. I've never had any jam, cider, or butter made with crab apples so I can't comment on their use for that. When Pehr Kalm, one of Linnaeus' twelve "apostles" encountered Malus coronaria, he suggested that they were useless for making anything but vinegar. If you're interested in making your own vinegar, I think crab apples would be a good candidate so you don't have to waste your better-tasting fruits on that service.

However, I've read that most crab apple species taste fine after they've been baked or roasted, so it's completely possible that they could be as legitimate a food source as the domestic apple.

As I understand it, crab apples are generally hardier than regular apples. Many of them are grown for their abundant, beautiful flowers which range from white to dark pink or 'red'. That would be an advantage from a permaculture point of view in attracting pollinators. Crab apples are more often used in jams and jellies and that kind of thing because of their very high pectin content. There are a very few 'large' crabapples that are nearly the size of small regular apples, and those can be eaten (I've heard) or used as candied apples that are very good (I wish I had the recipe, but I did have some once.) Not all crabapples are equal. The ones that grow where I currently live, well, they are only good for compost, but they make lovely, quick decomposing compost.
Most apples will do fine with any pollinator EXCEPT apples that are too closely related (for instance Golden Delicious and Red Delicious do not pollinate each other well because they are both sports of the Delicious apple. They also do not pollinate well with the Gala apple, of which they are close parent-lines of). Only a handful of regular apples are self-pollinating, and I only know of one fully self-pollinating apple. I do not know how crabapples rate at self-pollination.
Apples do not come true from seed, though certain characteristic are more likely to show up if the parent tree had them in seedlings. This is why apples are 'cloned' by grafting scion wood into a different rootstock. Apples with excellent flavor tend to not be as hardy as, say, cider apples, so that is why they are grafted onto hardy rootstock and you will rarely, if ever, find rooted cuttings or own-root regular apples, unless you grow one from seed. All commercially sold apples and even heirloom varieties are propagated this way. Apples and crabapples are not seperate species (for instance, the Granny Smith apple is a chance seedling of a crabapple orchard.)
Crabapples are also sometimes grown as a food source for wild creatures, such as birds and foxes.

Only a handful of regular apples are self-pollinating

About a year ago I started a thread about self-pollinating apple species. I have listed about 5 dozen varieties.

https://permies.com/t/7503/woodland-care/Self-Fertile-Apples

I planted 3 crab apples around my place and so far 4 apples - I am going to plant more apples. The crabs have long bloom times which have covered the bloom times of the apples and have fruited every year. The apples have not fruited yet at all due to severe weather and age of trees, But the crabs are the same age.
They are also quite nice to look at in the spring

I use them for crabapple jelly. You cut them in half and cook down slowly until you have a mush, then strain overnight. The next day measure the liquid and add 1Lb of sugar for every 1pt (UK/Can) or 1.25pt (US) of juice, and cook as you would any other jam or jelly. I usually use crabapple jelly in pork casseroles, especially if I'm also using cider. You need to watch it carefully as it's very easy to overcook it - I did that last year, and the result would have been better suited for construction than consumption - it was like granite!

They're also very good for bramble jelly. Use a 1:6 proportion of crab apples to blackberries, plus the rind and juice of a lemon for every 1Lb of crabapples. You make it in exactly the same way as crab apple jelly. Ditto hedgerow jelly (blackberries & sloes).

If you can be bothered with the fiddle of peeling, coring and chopping them, they're also good for chutneys. I usually use bramleys instead though, since they're easier.

I grew up on the shore of Long Island Sound, and we used to use our crabapple tree to remind us of when to start fishing for blackfish (tautog).
When the crabapple blossoms the blackfish start biting, so the folklore goes. Other than that it just made a mess and attracted yellow jackets.
We eventually replaced it with a calendar.

I use them as a base for my hot pepper jelly instead of vinegar when I can get them. They make absolutely killer jelly and you don't have to add any extra pectin.

i have a pole crab apple that I moved (had it before our housefire and it was the only moved tree that survived). It has huge crabapples, they are nearly as big as a regular apple, very tasty and nearly black..so definately worth having. It also has the prettiest bright pink flowers in the spring. thses apples are large enough to can for spiced apples

I have hunted since 2017 for a Chestnut Crabapple in the Midwest, and just got 2 lovely specimens from a great nursery in Apple Vallet MN named Pahls this fall (2021). This is the tree my kids grew up under, in Grandma's MN backyard that made the best eating, sauce and pie apples ever. Perfect 2-inch apples, lovely May blooms, sweet yet complex flavor, disease resistant...the total package. The time it took me to find a nursery in a 4 state search radius with available stock should be enough to support their desirability. If you find one, buy it...you won't ever regret the investment!

Interesting! Do the seeds breed true, or is it grafted onto a hardy rootstock? The latter is the norm up here, to survive our winters.

Tim Crowhurst wrote:

If you can be bothered with the fiddle of peeling, coring and chopping them, they're also good for chutneys. I usually use bramleys instead though, since they're easier.  

I am lucky that our Crabapple varieties around here are quite big, about an inch and a half across. That makes coring them a little easier, but still a pain in the butt. Nevertheless, my wife and I did do a figurative ton of them one year and made the most amazing Crabapple chutney! We just washed and cored them, we didn't peel them at all.
I'm not sure if wild apples have all the same benefits as crab apples, but we have a lot of wild apples around here. We have used them in cider, we've made applesauce with them, we have used them in cooking, etc. The trees are very hardy of course and they produce a lot. They're not very good for eating but they're great for cooking. When we plant our apple trees we're going to include at least one crabapple. We already have wild apples around here for pollination and such.

As a child I had a booklet with 'tree fairies'. The picture I liked most was called 'Crab Apple fairy'. For many years I thought that Crab Apple was that Japanese Quince shrub (Chaenomeles japonica), because we had it in the garden and the fruits looked like those in the picture. Now I know it is a real apple, but with very small fruits.

We lived in Michigan for a number of years, the kids and I found a wild crabapple, it made the best jelly. The first year we found it I made jelly and my first loaf of anadama bread. Heaven!

Wish I knew what variety it was.

Interesting thread. It looks like the term crab apple covers a lot of malus varieties in English, whereas the German Krabapfel/Holzapfel (malus sylvestris) only refers to the one European variety of a small, hard and tart wild apple (which does hybridize with other malus species, however).

The European crab apple was once common in the landscape and found in woodland pasture farming as the trees are so hardy and propagate through root suckers (and seeds germinate better after passage through grazing animasl).
Today they are used in some regions to "spice up" normal apple juice by adding some percentage of crab apples.

I don't even know if we have crab apples around here, have to ask in my conservationist group if we planted some in our community biotops.

However, I was not aware that there is such a huge variety of what we call in German "ornamental" wild apples: M. specatbilis, m. prunifolia, m. fusca, m. kansuensis,  m x zumi etc. etc. They are quite popular in gardens and I like them, blossoms in spring and fruits for the birds in autumn.

In my part of the world, old, abandoned farmsteads are a good place to look for heritage crabapple ("jelly apple") trees. A century ago, when pioneers and homesteaders were clearing the land, they would order bare root apple trees from the Eaton's or Sears Roebuck catalogues. These were incredibly hardy, and make a beautiful ruby coloured jelly or juice.

Minutes after I posted, I got an ad in Facebook from a German nursery and manufacturer of "nordic fruit products", among them a wine made from wild (ornamental) apples.
They sell all kinds of ornamental apples, aronia, quince, mispilus germanicus etc. as well as small amounts of wines.
Not sure if the link will work - no, sorry, can't include the image from Facebook. There were some middle sized red apples. Surely enough they have high enough quantities to make that work with pure crab apples.

I love crab apples.  I've heard them describe as any apple reliably less than 2 inches in size, at least in America.  I grew up with one that was green and waxy and about an inch in size, had pink single flowers and I swear it had thorns on its branches.  I'd love to have a tree like that and I'll just keep looking.

I've made crabapple butter from what I think is a Dolgo crabapple tree.  Its delicious and better than regular apple butter.  I've tried my hand at making picked crab apples, but they kind of turned to mush.  They still taste great as a meat side dish.   I've eaten some bigger red ones not sure what type and my plan is to incorporate them into cider making soon, both sweet and hard cider.  The red ones produce a nice red juice and jelly.

I remember my mother in law making pickled crabapples out of the Dolgo crab [which is bigger, like a Ping-Pong ball]. Bees love the pollen and because of the extended season, your crabs may help pollinate a number of apples that might not make as many fruit otherwise..
Their value is for me is for chicken forage. Crabapples are usually pretty small, and so when they fall to the ground, the chickens have a field day! I also have all sorts of wild cherries [whose value is questionable] for the same reason.
If you have coddling moths, treat those trees in the same way as your best apples, because if you only treat your preferred trees, the coddling moths will survive on the crabs and the following year will be all over you preferred apple trees..

Crab apples are more nutritious than regular apples. The nutrition is in the peel, and a crab apple tree will have a lot more total peel than the same size regular size apple tree will.  They also do pollinate better, because there are so many more blossoms. Many of them are better at fighting disease and all other natural activities, because they are more like the original wild apples.  
John S
PDX OR

I have many apple trees, and yet prize my crabapple trees almost as much. My favorite is Dolgo: maybe a large apple is an inch and a half; oval shaped, crisp and beautiful ruby-red. It gives a fabulous sweet/tart zing to my baked goods that no other fruit has, certainly not rhubarb, which I also love. But it is LABORIOUS to core! The seeds are very hard, and the husks get jammed in my gums if I miss them. I have SEARCHED for a small enough apple corer that’s faster than the olive pitter I’ve used; my fingers get sticky, wrinkled and squeaky when coring. I want a 9-piece (at a time) corer- please someone make one!!! I’ve found a place that will custom make cookie cutters... just might happen!
I just planted a Chestnut crab, and got a few apples off a 2 year old Centennial crab. Centennial’s were a good 2”, oval fruit; crisp and sweet. I think Chestnut is about 2”, round, crisp, and sweet. None of my crabapples are good keepers (about 2 weeks to start softening), and turn to mush when frozen. Dehydrating is ok, but I still have to core! I can chop them up in the food processor first, but even if I crunch my way through the seeds, those darned seed husks still poke their way into my gums. In my experience, Whitneys are soft- PASS. I got my trees at the Green Barn in Isanti, Mn, and a couple at the Rum River Tree Farm in/near Andover(?), Mn. All the flowers are white. The Dolgos ripen well before the Honeycrisp and Haralsons. Not sure about the other two. Husband LOVES the sweetness of the Centennial (sweeter than the other regular apples), but the unique (to me) flavor of the Dolgo makes it worth at least some hassle.

If I'm processing crabapples for the flesh instead of juice, I find trying to core them is a waste of time. Instead I set them on a cutting board blossom end up and use a sharp paring knife to cut the flesh off the core. A shallow angle for the blossom end and a steeper angle for the stem end. Four sides, four cuts. With a little practice it's pretty fast with very little waste.

I planted a few dozen crab apple trees as bare root trees when I planted my treefield. The idea was that I could use them to graft on better fruiting apple trees. This hasn't worked quite as well as I'd thought, although my first successful fruiting grafted tree turned out to be not the apples I was expecting. I thought it was either a Discovery type, or a rather nice baking apple from the lodge gardens. It's turned out to be more like an orange pippin, so I think I must have grafted three trees that year and it may be from a tree in the lodge that is since lost, so that is a happy thing.
Most of the crab apples seem to grow too narrow for easy whip and tongue grafting, which is the only type I've managed to get to take so far. I can try cutting them back and bud grafting on older trees perhaps. However the first crabapples set fruit this year. One (next to the unexpected apple) set lots of small golden fruit, which are sweet like an eater, but only just over an inch in diameter - might be useful for juice perhaps. The other only set one fruit despite having quite a bit of blossom. There are no other trees flowering near it yet. It appears to be mainly a tip flowerer, which don't do so well round here. The fruit is quite large and more like a cooker - more acidity. I think it will be good for fruit jelly.

Sometimes I see a large tree full of one type of crabapple.  The people are almost never using the crabapples.  My favorite use for crabapples is to graft one branch of them into a tree.  They pollinate better than other apples, and they're a different variety, so they help that way too.  I love to eat 10-20 of a good crabapple, but I don't have time to eat 700.  That's what I normally do.
John S
PDX OR

One of my friends used to can some of them whole, for winter pie making (much easier to core, 1 or 2 pie's worth at a time, after canning!) and the rest, she'd throw (whole) into a pot, to cook down, then put them through a mill, to remove the seeds, stems, & peels, add a bit of local honey, and can up as applesauce & apple butter. The scraps then went to her chickens & cow, who all had to fight off the cats and dogs, for them.

Crabapples are beautiful in bloom. That, in itself is a good reason to have them. But there is more.
They extend their blooming season on both sides of the apple blooming season, so they are very helpful in pollinating the very early and the very late apple trees.
They are very hardy, more hardy than most apples.
Now, about the fruit: Besides some that are purely ornamental, I have a Dolgo, which is supposed to make a slightly larger fruit. I'm not crazy about it because if you try to core them, you will have a monstrous task for a very small return. The way I look at it, I plant apples to have nice, large beautiful healthy apples, not to get a fairly tart fruit the size of a golf ball. [Remember, they will still need the weeding, spraying if you do, pruning, mulching etc.] so I have 4 and I'm happy with that. I have my chickens run under them and they do a great job of keeping the orchard clean of fallen fruit.
My mother in law would preserve them whole, in 1:1 syrup and with the "tail". She would pick it by the tail squeeze the whole thin between tongue and palate and "suck" the innards, leaving the skin and pips attached to the tail. They are OK that way but I would not cross the street to get a jar. I find them much more useful in making cider. It is still more work than regular apples, but I just split them in half to verify that the inside is as sound as the outside and run them through the in sink disposal, along with the other apples. [Your cider is actually better is you mix your apples than if you get a "straight" one cultivar cider].
What come out on the other end is applesauce with the skins and pips mixed in. I put them in cloth bags and I extract the juice. My chickens fight over the mash and I get a delightful cider. I never add any sugar.
From there, I can sterilize the juice, or add yeast and make hard apple cider, or if I have a lot of hard cider, I pour the juice in a few homer pails, cover and let them freeze in a nice cold night. t
The next morning, I punch the center of the ice and lift a ring of solid ice. That really concentrate the apple Schnapps. All I have to do is bottle it. Yum!
What I'd like to know, and maybe you can help me with that is: could I graft the scion of a good cultivar, like a Cortland, Bonnie Best, Wealthy, Haralson on the stock of the crab apple? Are they similar enough that the graft would "take"?
since they are all in the Malus domestica family, it should work.
I heard that you could even graft a medlar on a crab, even though they are not the same genus. I might just get a medlar to try.

While crab apples have other uses, I'm skeptical about how much pollination benefit they provide in a polyculture setting. In a mono-culture of acre after acre of Red Delicious trees, they are useful because you can stick in a few crab apples and achieve good pollination. In a polyculture with several different varieties nearby, adding a crab apple for pollination seems a bit redundant.

Here's a good chart showing pollination compatibility for various apples.
https://www.acnursery.com/resources/pollination-charts/apple-chart

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
What I'd like to know, and maybe you can help me with that is: could I graft the scion of a good cultivar, like a Cortland, Bonnie Best, Wealthy, Haralson on the stock of the crab apple? Are they similar enough that the graft would "take"?
since they are all in the Malus domestica family, it should work.
I heard that you could even graft a medlar on a crab, even though they are not the same genus. I might just get a medlar to try.

I can't comment on Medlar, but suspect they are similar enough to graft, I'm pretty sure people have had success grafting apple onto Hawthorne, although I've not tried it myself, but I have had pretty good success grafting 'good' apples onto crabapples. At least, I have about 5 trees now that I grafted known good apples that fruit locally, onto crabapple rootstock I planted (edited to add photo of successful graft this year). One so far has fruited. I'm not an experienced grafter and don't live in a good environment for top fruit - I guess I get about 30% take. Apples are all Malus. Eating apples are Malus domestica, crab apples are various species: mine I believe are M. sylvestris - It seems there are several different varieties of crabapple in the US, but I expect they can be grafted in the same way. I deliberately planted the crabs in the hopes of grafting onto them, although several will stay as crabs as well. As I implied in my post above, I'm impressed with the variety of fruit I'm getting with my 2 crabs that have fruited so far.
I think I will make a little cider vinegar with my sweet crabapples. I like the idea of putting them through a juicer to remove the bits after cooking though and I may try that another time.