Southern crab apple, Malus angustifolia, has the most pleasantly fragrant flowers of nearly any plant available, and the tart fruits that can be used for jelly are a bonus. Other comparably good smelling plants are phlox, swamp azalea, Rhododendron L., tea olive, Osmanthus Lour., and princess tree, Paulownia tomentosa (Thunb.) Siebold & Zucc. ex Steud., which is similar to lilac, Syringa L. (discussed with the olive family, Oleaceae), but for comparison Chinese privet, Ligustrum L., is to sickeningly sweet similar to Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera L., but more overpowering. There is the risk of diseases such as cedar-apple rust, and fireblight for southern crab apple, but the fragrance is well worth it. To minimize the respective risk of those two diseases don’t plant apples near juniper Juniperus L., which is the alternate host for the rust, and don’t fertilize crab apples at all because the succulent growth fertilizer encourages is the most susceptible to fireblight.
For those folks lucky
enough to live in the area, the Scottsboro Tree Commission gives out tree seedling
each Arbor Day, which in
The sweet crab apple, Malus coronaria (L.) Mill. is also native to this area although it is encountered less frequently and the fragrance is compared to violets, Viola L. The only other crab-apples native to this country are prairie crab apple, Malus ioensis (Alph. Wood) Britton, which is found in the central states, and Oregon crab apple, Malus fusca (Raf.) C.K. Schneid., which is found in states on the west coast including Alaska. There are many other species of crab apples as well as numerous hybrids and cultivars. Some notable species include Siberian crab apple, Malus baccata (L.) Borkh., Japanese flowering crab apple, Malus floribunda Siebold ex Van Houtte, Sargent's [crab] apple, Malus sargentii Rehder, and European crab apple, Malus sylvestris (L.) Mill., which has been considered synonomous with paradise apple, Malus pumila Mill.
The paradise apple is so called due to it representing the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, but in actuality the apple was not even mentioned there, instead it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When apple is mentioned in the Bible it is either in the euphemism apple of my eye, or refers to apricots, Prunus L.. Johnny Appleseed is famous in American folklore for planting apples across much of the Midwest. While at Philmont Scout Ranch in June 2009, we went by the Chase Ranch, which has an apple orchard that was called Chase's Folly because nobody believed apple trees would grow in that environment; if anything they rarely have fruit due to freezes that typically come after the blossoms considering that the elevation is over 6000 feet. One of the key differences between an apple and a crab apple is the size of the mature fruit, which typically breaks at about 2 inches in diameter.