Crabapples are fruiting trees of the genus Malus, the same as the common apple (Malus domestica). Crabapples were originally wild in their native North American and Euro Asian regions, but nowadays they are cultivated all around the world as ornamentals and for their edible fruit, small apples used mainly in jams, jellies and for cider. In my backyard in Southern Ontario, the squirrels brought some seed from a neighbour’s tree, and now I have a beautiful crabapple tree, most likely of the variety Adams, characteristic for its showy dark pink flowers and red fruit (click on any of the photos below, for full size images):
Although the fruit usually stays on the tree even after all the leaves are gone, this year most of the fruit just dropped at once, while many of the leaves remained (photo below, left). I decided to rake the leaves on the ground right away, and found a lot of fruit as well (photo below, right, click on photos for full size images):
It seemed like a lot of waste to just compost the crabapples, so I collected them in a bowl to bring inside:
I felt like a pioneer woman, foraging true free fall food, or in this case, “free-fall food.” Stay tuned for a crabapple jelly recipe, in my next post.
My Slice of Mexico 
Irene, I have 3 apple trees and one pear tree in the backyard. The apple trees produce and drop fruit at different rates. This year one tree dropped most of their apples already, but the other 2 are still full of apples. I would love to do something with the apples besides letting the deer have them every year. Seeing what you do with these might spur me to action.
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Oh, cool, Lisa! Why don’t you usually eat them, are they not tasty enough? If that’s the case, jelly would be perfect. I will try to post the recipe for the jelly asap.
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Embarrassed to say, but I’ve never tasted them. They don’t get sprayed for bugs so they are buggy. Trying to figure out a way to use them and get around the bugs.
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Oh yeah, jelly sounds good then 👍
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What a beautiful tree. And the crabapples look pretty right in the bowl!
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Thank you, Lois!
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So good to glean the bounty nature provides for free. I collected some amazing chokecherries this summer. Tart, but tasty. When I’d had my fill, I put them back out for the birds.
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Lovely! The birds sure got their share of some crabapples, plus some of my cherries and black currants, and the squirrels clean the black walnuts, which I have not been brave enough to try yet.
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