Malus crescimannoi Raimondo

Description

Malus crescimannoi is a deciduous tree up to 10 m tall with cracked bark. Its leaves are about 5.5 × 3.5 cm, hairy when young and more or less hairless when mature, on a hairy stalk up to 4.5 cm long. It flowers in April and May¹. The flowers are smaller than those of the crab apple and the orchard apple, with strongly pink to purple petals 11–14 mm long, and stamens 5–7 mm long, shorter than the styles². The fruit is light yellow, sometimes partly pink, and about 4 cm across¹.

Range and habitat

It is known only from north-eastern Sicily, from the submontane belt of the Flascio river basin on the northern slopes of Monte Soro, where it grows in deciduous oak and beech woods between 1,000 and 1,600 m¹. The IUCN Red List assessed it in 2011 as Data Deficient³. One seed collection of it is held at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank¹.

Relationship to the cultivated apple

It was described in 2008¹. It is clearly very close to the European crab apple and the orchard apple, both of which also grow in Sicily, and nothing can yet be said of its origins². Its name commemorates Francesco Giulio Crescimanno, an arboricultural researcher at the University of Palermo². No record of it in cultivation has been traced².

Where the sources disagree

• Species or local race. It grows as a distinct wild plant, but it could yet be reinterpreted as a local race of Malus sylvestris².
• How threatened. The IUCN Red List found too few data to assign a category³. Kew’s species profile notes a suggestion that it is near threatened¹, and a 2015 review counted it among the near-threatened apples on the IUCN list of 2013⁴.
• Fruit shape. Trees and Shrubs Online, after the original description, gives the fruit as ovoid and usually longer than wide²; Kew’s profile gives it as about 40 × 40 mm¹.