Apple tree ID

[3forfree]

Neighbor was farming 7 acres next to my house and quit using this field and just let it go to weeds, and what ever trees grew up. Yesterday I noticed one of the trees had quite a few small apples growing on it,and was wondering if anyone could ID what these are. They are small like cherry tomatos, grow in clumps of 5 and are very sour. Any ideas? Thanks

 

[sourland]

It looks like a crabapple of some sort - probably the result of a seed passed by a bird or mammal.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, probably grown from a seed dropped by a bird or mammal, maybe cow or horse. Some form of crabapple is a darn good guess.

There are extremely few apples that will self-pollinate. Practically all of them have to be pollinated by another variety. If you grow an apple tree by seed you are not going to get a recognized breed. You just created your own variety. Sometimes you get a pretty decent apple but most of the time you get a really poor apple. That’s how all the apple varieties we have were created, then the good ones are propagated by some form of grafting or cloning. They can do some pretty wild things now with just a bit of tree tissue.

Crabapples will pollinate regular apples. That doesn’t affect the fruit that forms, just the genetics of the seeds. Many commercial apple orchards use crabapples to cross-pollinate their regular apple trees. So that tree could easily be a cross between a regular apple and a crabapple. Or it may be from two different crabapples. In any case, those look really nice. You could probably make a real nice crabapple jelly from them if you can collect enough.

 

[Jesusfreak101]

Kinda looks like pomegranate that could just be because of my phone and i cant see it all that well.

 

[sourland]

That would have to be a tough pomegranate to survive in Michigan.

 

[Jesusfreak101]

Lol i didnt even see the location lmao oh wow lol thats bad lol i think its bed time now lol.