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In addition to their decorative value (that's designer-ese for
"pretty"), crabapples are high in pectin for jelly and high in acid
for vinegar. The spring flowers are adored (adorned?) by
pollen-loving insects, including honeybees, and by hummingbirds. In
the fall, I see squirrels furiously burying the fruit and the tree
limbs crowded with starlings, monk parrots (South American JFK-escapees),
mocking birds, robins, and finches. Other furry folk including deer,
raccoons, rabbits, possum, skunk, fox and coyotes also favor
crabapples. All spread the seeds.
Crabapples are cold hardy into southern Canadian and stand up to
heat down to northern Florida. Like most members of the rose family,
crabapples, and their "eating apple" descendants like full sun,
moist but well-drained, acidy soil. But note the damage to the
leaves of the above crabapple, a hybrid that's living on its own at
the edge of Stamford, CT's Scalzi Park. Like garden roses, when
presented with less than prefect conditions (and sometimes even
then), crabapples are subject to a range of insect and fungal pests.
But please, hold the 'Cides (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides,
etc). Your local nurseryman or landscaper will recommend that you
combat the pests by spraying this or spreading that, and pour on
some fertilizer too. And he'll make money selling you the stuff;
but, then, you did ask how to get rid of the pests, not
whether they're harmless.
While 'sides (yams, squash, spinach, potatoes, etc) may be great on
the Thanksgiving table, 'cides are, well, "'cides". Just like
suicides, regicides, and patricides, they kill stuff.
I don't care what the label says. Read the fine print: if
the stuff's so safe, why is it a felony to pour it down the
sewer? Fact is there is no adequate, cost-effective way to
test what these chemicals actually do, especially when mixed
together. Something is giving kids asthma and pets cancer.
Why is it a problem if you have some misshapen fruit and
some chewed up leaves? It won't kill the tree or you. But
the 'cides…Instead, think of the insects as extra bird
food. If you don't spray, you'll encourage, rather than
poison, insect-eating birds. If you're very lucky, you might
even get your own woodpecker to root insects out of the
crabapple's softwood.
Here's a picture of what's probably a native sweet
crabapple, growing wild in Stamford's Mianus Gorge and it's
just fine, thank you, without any chemical aids. |
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Worldwide, there are about 35 native crabapples (malus
species); several of them (including the prairie, sweet,
narrow-leaved and southern) from North America. Somewhere in
Europe or Asia, thousands of years ago, someone started the
hybridization process that transformed the tiny crabapple
into Macintosh and Golden Delicious. Today, worldwide, there
are about 7,500 apple cultivars; 800 or more of them produce
fruit of less than 2" in diameter and, therefore, qualify as
"crabapples" in the trade. The other 6000+ are presumably
"eating apples".
Our native crabapples have yellow-green fruit and pinkish
flowers. The native Prairie, can get quite tall (for a
crabapple, that is-- about 30'-40'), and hangs on to its
golf-ball sized fruit long after the leaves are gone, making
it look, in the snow, like someone decorated it with
Christmas bulbs. The hybrids flower in all shades of red,
pink, yellow, orange and white; their fruit also comes in a
variety of sizes and colors. There's an ancient row of the
hybrid Sergeant Crabapples at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
that host a flock cedar waxwings each fall, luring the birds
with fruit that is so red and shiny that it looks
caramelized. |
