Crab apple
Malus sylvestrisCrab apple grows into a small tree, sometimes spiny, with glossy oval leaves that are smooth underneath once grown. In autumn it carries small, hard, yellowish green apples.
How to identify crab apple →
Lookalikes
Crab apple or pear?
Both are hedgerow trees in white blossom in spring, and their winter shoots are much alike.
The quickest check
The quickest check is the flower colour, and when. Crab apple: white from deep pink buds, in May. Pear: white all over, in April. No flowers on the tree? Check the fruit shape.
At a glance
| Look at | Crab apple | Pear |
|---|---|---|
| Flower colour, and when | White from deep pink buds, in May | White all over, in April |
| Fruit shape | Small and round, 2 to 3 cm across | Pear-shaped, tapering into a long stalk |
| Trunk | Purplish brown, in close scaly ridges | Dark, cracked into small knobbly oblongs |
Three ways to tell them apart
Flower colour, and whenFlowers
Fruit shapeApples
TrunkBark
The two trees
Pear
Pyrus communisPear grows into an upright, slender tree with dark bark cracked into small knobbly blocks. In April, clusters of white blossom cover the crown.
Their other lookalikes
In the app
See them side by side in Treely
- Both trees, part by partLeaves, bark, buds, flowers and fruit, photographed through the year
- Every lookalike side by sideThe checks that settle it, for every pair people mix up
- A short round each dayUntil you can tell them apart at a glance
- The full GuideBoth trees written up in full, with where to find them
Free to download.
Every fact on this page is checked against the Collins Tree Guide, last in November 2026. Spotted something that looks wrong in front of a real tree? Tell us. How we check.
Photographs: kh-c (CC0), steve_mcwilliam (CC0), nicolahallows (CC0), chrisdt (CC BY 4.0), Daniel Cahen (CC BY 4.0), bobwardell (CC0). With thanks to everyone who shares their photographs on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.