Malus turkmenorum Juz. & Popov

Description

Malus turkmenorum differs from the typical Asian wild apple in being a shrub, up to 3 m tall, with smaller leaves, up to 8 × 4 cm, smaller flowers, 2.5–3 cm across, and smaller fruit, about 2.5 cm across. The fruit has been described as tasteless¹.

Range and habitat

It was first described from the Kopet Dag, a mountain range on the border of Turkmenistan and Iran with a more or less Mediterranean climate, rising out of saline desert¹. Plants of the World Online gives its native range as Turkmenistan to Afghanistan². In 2009 it was listed in the Red Data Book of Turkmenistan but had not yet been evaluated for the global IUCN Red List³.

Relationship to the cultivated apple

Its value in cultivation probably lies in breeding rootstocks, because it tolerates drought and salt¹. The only record of it in cultivation that Trees and Shrubs Online could find is at the United States’ apple collection at Geneva, New York, raised from seed from a Russian research institute; there its fruit is about 4.5 cm across, larger than described¹.

Where the sources disagree

• Species or subspecies. Plants of the World Online accepts it as a species², as do Juniper and Mabberley¹. Trees and Shrubs Online considers it very doubtfully distinct from Malus sieversii¹; the Red List of Trees of Central Asia treats it as a subspecies of M. sieversii³; and other authors have made it a variety of M. sieversii or a subspecies of Malus orientalis².
• Range. The Red List of Trees of Central Asia calls it endemic to Turkmenistan³; Plants of the World Online includes Afghanistan².