Plant portrait of the month: European crab apple

CWRs are one of the tools that can be used to address future challenges on food security, adaptation to climate change, and a sustainable environmentally friendly agriculture.

Forest apple

The plant portrait of October is European crab apple, a small and thorny, native wild tree, which is distributed over most of the European countries, including all the Nordic countries except Iceland. Its scientific name, Malus sylvestris, means “forest apple”. It is found growing as single individuals or in small groups in forest edges, thickets, hedgerows or roadsides.

Cultivated early

Crab apple is a wild relative of domesticated apple (Malus domestica) and also one of its ancestors. It has been identified that Malus sieversii, another wild apple species from Central Asia, is domestic apple’s key ancestor. The wild apple was originally domesticated in Central Asia around 3000-4000 years ago and is one of the earliest trees to be cultivated. The European crab apple was a major secondary contributor of genes to the domesticated apple from about 1500 years ago, to the extent that domesticated apple is nowadays more closely related to crab apple than Malus sieversii.