Western Crabapple, also called Pacific Crabapple, is most often found in areas that are moist and shady, but it can grow in open meadows. A member of the Rosaceae Family, it grows by Kiosk 06. The Western Crabapple is a small tree, or sometimes a several stemmed shrub with spurs on its trunk. It is our native apple, and it is found in fields, woods, swamps, and meadows from sea level to mid-elevations. In the Spring it has
clusters of white flowers that in the Autumn turn to purplish-red-yellow small fruits. The spurs on the trunk and twigs look like briers, although they are where the flowers and fruit are produced. You can recognize “apple leaves” by their simple lance-like, long shaped leaves that have a saw-tooth edge. Its history and DNA analyses are intriguing; genetically it is close to Asian apples suggesting perhaps early (10,000 years ago) travelers brought them here (by canoe). A West Coast native plant only, many local Native American Indian tribes may have tended crabapple orchards. (It has 2 other eastern Malus cousins, but ours (fusca) is easily identified by its oblong shape of its fruit. In the Spring this is one of the area’s prettiest trees, found nowhere else in the Americas. Pilchuck Learning Center’s sponsored Western Washington State University SAM Project extinction possibility is slight; abundant, native to Cascadia.
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Malus+fusca
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Malus%20fusca
https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=MAFU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_fusca
https://www.finnriver.com/acknowledging-the-history-of-indigenous-apple-orchards
http://www.burkemuseum.org/research-and-collections/botany-and-herbarium/collections/database/results.php?Genus=Malus&Species=fusca&SourcePage=search.php&IncludeSynonyms=Y&SortBy=DESC&SortOrder=Year
It is thought that Native Americans brought these apple trees (via seeds in stored fruit that was eaten along the way) as they migrated south along the west coast of North America. How many years ago might this have been?
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