Excerpt from Addisonia, Vol. 24: Colored Illustrations and Popular Descriptions of Plants; 1960-1964
When in bloom, the crab - apples are one of the most decorative of spring-flowering trees, for their branches are usually smothered under a canopy of white or pink, or sometimes both colors in combination. They are not as large as ordinary apple trees and therefore admirably suited for small places where they give two periods of display, flower and fruit. Our present subject is merely one of a large group of species and hybrids; the form here illustrated has somewhat larger fruits than is usual.
The Siberian crab-apple is a round-headed tree to forty-five feet in height. The bark of the trunk and branches is brown and rather smooth but becomes somewhat scaly in age; the twigs are slender and smooth, light yellow-brown. The leaves are an inch and a half to three inches long, the blades elliptic to ovate in outline, broadly wedge-shaped or rounded at the base, with a somewhat tapered tip, slightly hairy on the underside when young; the petioles an inch to an inch and a half long. The flowers are an inch and a half across, white, on slender stalks one to two inches long. The petals are short-clawed, broadly elliptic to ovate, with blunt tips. The five sepals are glabrous, lance-shaped, and long-pointed. The numerous stamens have white filaments and light yellow anthers. The inferior ovary is three to five-celled, the three to five styles connate at the base. The fruit is a nearly round pome, red or yellow, three-eighths to three-quarters of an inch in diameter, the calyx deciduous.
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