White, 3 to 4 cm across, opening from pink buds. The flower stalk and the green cup behind the petals are smooth.
Native · Up to 17 m
Crab apple
Malus sylvestris · Rosaceae
Crab 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.
Often mistaken for pear. How to tell them apart →Know it byBlossomWhite, 3 to 4 cm across, opening from pink buds.LeavesOval and glossy, to 6 cm long, with small rounded teeth.
ApplesRound, 2 to 3 cm, sometimes flushed red when ripe.
BlossomWhite, 3 to 4 cm across, opening from pink buds.LeavesOval and glossy, to 6 cm long, with small rounded teeth.ApplesRound, 2 to 3 cm, sometimes flushed red when ripe.Then check · TwigsGlossy brown shoots, sometimes with spines, and pointed buds that are fuzzy only at the tip.
How to identify a crab apple
Oval and glossy, to 6 cm long, with small rounded teeth, and hairless on both sides once grown.
Round and hard, 2 to 3 cm across, yellowish green and sometimes flushed red when ripe.
Learn the crab apple in TreelyEvery part through the year, and a short round each day until you know it.Get Treely
Every part, in photographs
Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0
Matthew Flood, CC BY 4.0When to look
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In leaf
Flowers
Apples
In leaf: April to November · Flowers: April to May · Apples: June to December
Where you’ll find it
Wild in old woods and hedges on heavier soils, and until recently hardly ever planted. It also grows in scrub and copses, by roads and on rough ground, usually as a single tree, and keeps to the open parts of woods. It grows throughout England, Wales and Ireland, and more thinly in Scotland.
What it’s mistaken for
Crab apple or pear?Both are hedgerow trees in white blossom in spring, and their winter shoots are much alike.Flower colour, and when→
Crab apple or hawthorn?Both are thorny trees of old hedges, in blossom at much the same time, with crab apple a little earlier.Outline of a leaf→
Crab apple or blackthorn?Both are thorny hedge plants with white flowers.Fruit in autumn→
Crab apple or wild cherry?Both carry white blossom in spring, in hedges and woods.Trunk→
- AppleApple is the commonest apple in hedges, and the tree most often taken for crab apple. The two cross freely and the crosses are common. Leaf. Crab apple: bare of hairs once grown, and glossy. Apple: a thin coat of soft hairs, all season.
In the app
There’s more of the crab apple in Treely
- Every part, through the yearLeaves, bark, buds, flowers and fruit, photographed in every season
- Its lookalikes, side by sideThe checks that settle it, part by part
- A short round each dayUntil you know the crab apple on sight, from any side
- Name it from a photoA leaf, the bark or a flower, and Treely tells you which tree
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), nicolahallows (CC0), Daniel Cahen (CC BY 4.0), Matthew Flood (CC BY 4.0), chrisdt (CC BY 4.0), Leon Cross (CC BY 4.0), Nicola Crockford (CC BY 4.0), bobwardell (CC0). With thanks to everyone who shares their photographs on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.