Adams flowering crabapple
Malus
A small, densely branched ornamental crabapple, usually 5–7m tall, grown for its carmine buds opening to rose-pink single blossom in May. Young leaves unfold bronze-red before maturing green, and the glossy dark red fruit, barely 2cm across, hangs on well into autumn. The flesh is hard, sour and astringent raw, but high in pectin, which makes it a jelly and cider-blending fruit rather than an eating apple.
Planted rather than wild: street and car-park trees, park and garden specimens, and amenity planting on new housing and verges. Tolerates most soils and urban air. Not naturalised in Britain or Ireland, so any tree found has been put there.
The flesh is safe once cooked, but too sour and astringent to eat raw in quantity. The pips, as in all apples, contain cyanogenic compounds, so discard them rather than crushing them into preserves. Amenity trees often stand at road edges or in sprayed beds, so wash fruit and pick away from traffic.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Flowers
Deep carmine buds opening to single rose-pink blossoms about 3cm across, carried in clusters along the branches in May. Smaller and far more strongly pink than the white, pink-backed flowers of an orchard apple.
Fruit
Glossy dark red pomes 1.5–2cm wide on a long slender stalk, with the dried remains of the calyx at the tip. Cut one across and it shows a five-chambered apple core, which separates a crabapple from any berry of similar size and colour.
Leaves
Ovate, toothed, sometimes shallowly lobed near the base, opening bronze-red and darkening to bronze-tinted green. The reddish flush through early summer is the easiest way to pick this out from a green-leaved crab at a distance.
Habit
A rounded, twiggy tree of 5–7m with a dense crown, usually growing on a short single trunk as a nursery-grown standard rather than the leaning, thorny form of a wild crab.
Flesh, cut and tasted
Firm and pale cream to yellow, sharply sour with a drying astringency. A crabapple that tastes sweet and mealy is a small orchard apple or a seedling of one, not this.
Updated 2026-08-11T07:32:17.167Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Other