Identification needed

I found this little tree or bush in my garden. I saw it the first time last year but now it has fruits on it and I'd love to know if they are edible. It is 2 meters high now and has only one stem. Anybody got a hunch what it might be? 

Sorry that the pictures aren't clear. I took them with my lovely cheap camera from China.

Looks like maybe Sarvice, or Serviceberry (Amelanchier)

Thanks for your reply, rockguy. I have a serviceberry in my garden but leaves, fruit and stem are quite different from this newly found tree or bush. The new one has solitary fruits like an appletree. The fruits are hard not soft berries like the one from the serviceberry and are red not purple. The stem is much brighter and looks more rough then the one from my serviceberry bush.

Here some new, hopefully better, pictures.

Maybe a kind of hawthorne? There are a lot of variants but the leaves are not quite right either. Not thick enough for a sloe....I give up, what is it? 

I'd love to know it, too! Any other suggestions?

Here is a picture from 2009, I think. The unknown tree/bush with pink flowers.

It's a crab apple tree.  Don't eat the fruit.  Ok, eat it once and you'll never do it again!  lol.  Bitter! 

Thanks, stlgardener. I think you're right!

Damn, I've hoped it was a tree useful for human needs. Not even the birds seem to like the fruits on it.

Lots of people make and enjoy crabapple jelly but I don't know what varieties are best.  I'm a culinary wienie and don't like bitter/sour or hot.  lol. 

Crab apples are great. They are very high in natural pectin, so you can use them in your jams. I grate them up into the jam that I am cooking. I also grate them to dehydrate and when I make oatmeal, instead of using the grannysmith apples that I used to buy, I just throw in some of the grated or chunked dried crab apples. I probably still have 3 gallons of dried crab apples from last fall. I like them tart. We also use the chunks in our trail mix. I think they actually taste better dried.

When I made a batch of apple pear wine last fall, I used some crab apples in the batch and it made it taste more like a hard cider, which turned out great and I will have to do again.

Wow, thanks a lot. I knew that apples are high in pectine and I've always put a bit of the paring in my jams instead of buying pectine in the store. Now I will use the crab apples instead. Hooray!

So does anyone know how to grow them?  I have one in my yard in the city and I want to start some for the farm.  The birds in my area seem to like them all winter long.  I have no trouble growing regular apple trees from seeds but for some reason I cant get one sprout off of these.  I beleive the variety is "siberian crab".

Have you tried to let a scion take root yet, Monica? If you don't like scion-clones maybe siberian crab apple seeds need a freezing-cold period of time to germinate, by that some seeds like acorns oversleep winter.

I would put some crab apples in the freezer vor 1-2 weeks and then look if they germinate.
Hope this was of any help.

I have tried taking them right off the tree in fall, off the ground, leaving them over winter burying the little apples at various depths, sparating the seeds like you do for tomatoes, planting a mushy apple of two in the very early spring etc.  I have tried stratifying them too.  I have tried rooting various cuttings all with no sucess.
I was hoping someone actually knew exactly how to do it.  Seems like I need a 1-2-3 for this one.
I have tried.... alot.

Damn, that sounds very frustrating. Have you tried to graft a siberian crabapple scion on a normal apple rootstock? I mean: They are from the same genus. It should work!

It probably would and in fact most apple trees that will grow in my neck the woods are grafted onto "Siberian crab" not the other way around.  I want to start some for the purpose of providing a cross pollinator for the one at the farm which had lovely blossoms this year but not one dang apple and for grafting other cuttings to so they will live more than one year here.  Most of the nurseries here in fact sell stuff that is not suitable for our climate, and soon dies, usually after a year or two at most.
I will persist in trying.  I can start seeds from every dang apple that I buy from the store but not the one that grows in my back yard. ARGH!   
Ill try somemore cuttings in the spring I guess. maybe when I rake up this falls piles ill just dump the whole lot all over the farm, some here, some there who knows.

rockguy wrote:
Looks like maybe Sarvice, or Serviceberry (Amelanchier)

This is not a service berry, service berry is a small tree and the berries grow in clusters.

I'm going to agree with some type of apple/cherry based on leaf shape and bark color /texture.

I've germinated apple seeds by accident after dumping cider pressings in an unused garden bed.  Maybe I just got lucky...

"Physical Description
Species Malus baccata

Trees to 10-14 m tall, with arching or pendulous branches. Branchlets reddish brown, terete , glabrous ; buds reddish brown, ovoid , scales tomentose at margin . Stipules caducous , lanceolate, ca. 3 mm, membranous, margin entire or with sparse glandular teeth, apex acuminate; petiole 2-5 cm, puberulous , with few glands when young, glabrescent ; leaf blade elliptic or ovate , 3-8 × 2-3.5 cm, glabrous or slightly puberulous when young, base cuneate or rounded , margin serrate, apex acuminate, rarely caudate-acuminate. Corymb at apices of branchlets, umbel-like, 5-7 cm in diam., 4-6-flowered; bracts caducous, linear-lanceolate, membranous, glabrous, margin glandular denticulate , apex acuminate. Pedicel 1.5-4 cm, slender, glabrous. Flowers 3-3.5 cm in diam. Hypanthium campanulate , glabrous. Sepals lanceolate, 5-7 mm, longer than hypanthium, abaxially glabrous, adaxially tomentose, margin entire, apex long acuminate. Petals white, obovate , 2-2.5 cm, base shortly clawed, apex obtuse-rounded. Stamens 15-20, unequal, ca. 1/2 as long as petals. Ovary 5- or 4-loculed, with 2 ovules per locule; styles 5 or 4, longer than stamens, densely villous basally. Pome red or yellow, subglobose, 8-10 mm in diam., with an obscure scar at apex; fruiting pedicel 3-4 cm, glabrous; sepals caducous. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Sep-O [source]

Habit: Tree , Shrub

Flowers: Profuse, small flowers borne in corymbs, with five petals. Blooms in April to early May. Fragrant, 5-petaled blossoms . Attracts bees. • Bloom Period: Mixed forests on slopes , among shrubs in valleys; sea level to 1500 m. • Flower Color: near white, white

Seeds: Fruit: Globose pome containing 5 carpels arranged in a star, each with 1-2 seeds.

Foliage: Summer foliage: Leaves are smooth , simple , broad, ovate or broad-eliptic or lanceolate, unlobed and toothed along the margin . Color is medium green.
Size/Age/Growth

Size: 20-30' tall.
Landscaping

Landscape Uses: Patio tree . Small groupings or massing. Specimen. Useful for showy bloom . Useful for high quality summer foliage . Attract birds and wildlife to fruit. • Care: Deer resistant. Tolerates pollution . Tolerates rabbits. Requires cross-pollination between individuals, via insects. Established plants can benefit from fertilization."

Above quote is from : http://zipcodezoo.com/Plants/M/Malus_baccata/  (Sorry i was going to shorten the quote, but i don't know how much of the info would be useful to you.)
                                                                        -------------------------

It wasn't easy to find reproduction of crab apples. It says that the Siberian Crab apple has white flowers, but elsewhere says that some people group other crab apples under the Siberian name..

I underlined the reason that you are not getting fertile seeds...so, if you don't want to buy a second tree or buy rooting hormone and try to root cuttings, then the answer to getting a fertile seed would be to use a paint brush to obtain pollen from one crab apple tree and put the brush in a plastic bag and take it to another crab apple tree and hand pollinate a flower. (Mark the flowers you pollinate well or you will not know which fruit is fertile and which sterile.)


Crab Apple is highly prized for smoking and curing meats. Try some of the wood in the BBQ grill and you may never use other woods for smoking again.

Kathryn wrote:
Crab apples are great. They are very high in natural pectin, so you can use them in your jams. I grate them up into the jam that I am cooking. I also grate them to dehydrate and when I make oatmeal, instead of using the grannysmith apples that I used to buy, I just throw in some of the grated or chunked dried crab apples. I probably still have 3 gallons of dried crab apples from last fall. I like them tart. We also use the chunks in our trail mix. I think they actually taste better dried.

When I made a batch of apple pear wine last fall, I used some crab apples in the batch and it made it taste more like a hard cider, which turned out great and I will have to do again.

Yes yes yes! When I lived in the city and was low on money, I would always walk the streets and pull crab apples from the trees and munch on them all the time i think they're delicious!

should be able to graft it to a malus sp and still keep the crabby fruits. malus is notoriusly hard to grow from layering, though Ive had some limited success. never tried a crab tho. cuttings are more likely to work, but best bet for instant (next year) crabs at the farm is to graft limb from current city tree to farm apple, id wager.