Flowering crabapple

Thank you, Embothrium! Can't find whether it's just ornamental, or edible.

All crabs edible, if you don't like the flavor and consistency of these then for you this one is not a fruit tree. There are many crabs with small fruits like these that are usually planted only for ornament (or the pollination of orchard apples).

Thanks again! I was uncertain, since I only found a site that said something about ornamental vs edible.

The flavor was definitely good... very good actually. And that was early yesterday... and I'm not dead yet. :D

ornamental vs edible

==<>>>> not really a gardening dichotomy ... as compared to that authors choice of words ...

all plants artificially planted in a garden ... anywhere not native.. are technically ornamental ... if you get my drift ...

you might try the fruit forum ... to see if any of them know about better tasting crabs... its a long shot ...

if you watch the birds.. in my MI ... they prefer to eat them AFTER winter ... when they are fermented .. so they have a reason to fly into windows ... my default is to always look to what the animals do with things ... but then.. i dont use such to eat things ...

ken

"Inedible" crab apples aren't poisonous. They are at worst so sour/astringent it's hard to force yourself to eat them. The "inedible" ones can still be used to make jam or hard cider.

Also, if you plant enough crab apple or apples, a few will be sweet and "edible". That's how new apple varieties are created. Basically an apple is a deformed crabapple born with out the ability to make the ingredients intended to ward off mammals. If that is a seed grown crab, you might have lucked out and randomly got an edible one.

I have Southern Crabapple here (Malus angustifolia), they get about the size of a small plum, but are so bitter there's no way you could eat them. Even the deer don't seem to like them.

But even those (M angustifolia) are still strictly speaking edible i.e. they won't poison you. There's a difference between being edible and being palatable. Being sharp, I wouldn't be surprised if they make good jelly.

The Whitney crab is one old-time edible cultivar. The crabapples on 'Whitney' are a bit larger than most, but still much smaller than the typical apple.

+oM

Everyone: Thank you so much for your responses! I really loved the taste of it, as I love sour foods. I've been eating lemons and unripe grapes and plums with salt since I was a toddler.

As I've said, these apples are 1/2 inch at best. The reason I was unsure was because the red ones were pretty much liquefied - so that threw me off.

You are probably not going to make jelly but just in case you do consider it, the size of the fruit doesn't matter. You just chuck the whole thing, skin pips and all, into a pot and cook it up. You are going to strain it to get the juice so all the bits don't matter. In fact the skin and pips contain a lot of the pectin.

ath,

My dad LOVED those hard green sour/astringent little native crabs... and had an 'orchard' of a dozen or more selections he'd collected through the years - mostly M.coronaria, but a couple of M.angustifolia in the mix. He'd gather 5 or 10 gallons of them and keep 'em in 5-gallon buckets on the unheated back porch and eat them all winter long... 5 or 10 a night. He had dentures... bet they'd have eaten the enamel off of real teeth!

Floral - I'd imagine that would taste amazing!

Lucky - Great idea!

Since I now know they're edible, I'm definitely harvesting what's not closest to the ground (leave those for the rabbits & squirrels).

Again - to everyone - thank you for responding!

The "inedible" ones can still be used to make jam or hard cider.

==>>> you add 50 pounds of sugar to my workboot.. and you can make jelly out of it ... lol ...

i think you hit the key here .. when you said ... you like tart ... most of us dont ... though the kids candies these days.. are sure slanted that way ...

good luck.. and have fun ... but be safe about what you eat from the garden ... this one was easy.. most things are highly questionable ....

ken

Ken - you come up with that kind of comment over and over again. It's meant humorously (I hope) but is very misleading for newbies. To make any jam or jelly the basic ratio is 1:1 i.e. a kilo of sugar to a litre of juice or kilo of fruit. Sharp fruit make excellent preserves and you don't need to add any more sugar than usual. I'd be interested to know if you've ever actually tasted home made crab apple jelly, or Chaenomeles jelly for that matter.

Dolgo crab post

Kelli08, Flora gave you some good advice. As you can see by my link I make crabapple jelly in August and its better than anything you could buy. The Dolgo crabapples that I use are firm and I cut them into halves or quarters and cook them. Put them in a jelly bag (cheesecloth) and hang it up and let it drip overnight. Then next measure out juice & sugar according to recipe (no need for pectin with crabapples) Cook it to the jelly stage, skim off foam and put in jars. done

Thanks again everyone.