Malus ioensis
Origin: Epworth, Iowa
Improvement status: Wild
Seeds per packet: ~10
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
Also called "Iowa Crab," prairie crab apple is a native North American apple species found from Texas and Louisiana to Southern Minnesota to New Jersey. It displays showy white to pink flowers in spring and bears small berry-like apples in fall. The fruit are rarely good for fresh eating (they can be quite astringent), but are excellent for wine, cider, or jelly (if you've never had crabapple jelly, you don't know what you're missing!). This is a great native fruit tree for wildlife tree, able to grow 35 feet tall and produce copious amounts of fruit. Hardy to USDA Zone 3.
Our seed was grown in Epworth, Iowa, and comes to us via the good folks at Sheffield's Seeds in Locke, NY.
GROWING TIPS: Seeds should be soaked in water for 24 hours then cold-moist stratified for 60 days before planting. Alternatively, they can be fall planted — but they might not sprout for a year or longer in that case.
NOTE: The photo of the flowers is from user Kenraiz, and is shared here
under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
