Nevertheless, _our_ wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who
belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods
from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there grows
elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-Apple, _Malus
coronaria_, “whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation.” It
is found from Western New-York to Minnesota, and southward. Michaux
says that its ordinary height “is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is
sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high,” and that the large
ones “exactly resemble the common apple-tree.” “The flowers are white
mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs.” They are
remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according to him, is
about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely acid. Yet they
make fine sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He concludes, that “if,
on being cultivated, it does not yield new and palatable varieties, it
will at least be celebrated for the beauty of its flowers, and for the
sweetness of its perfume.”
I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated
it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to
me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the “Glades,” a portion of
Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of
sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or would
distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had occasion to go to
Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to notice from the cars a
tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I thought it some
variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed on me,
that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing
flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the
year,—about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one,
and so I was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having
touched one, experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St.
Anthony’s Falls, I was sorry to be told that I was too far north for
the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about eight
miles west of the Falls; touched it and smelled it, and secured a
lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium. This must have been near
its northern limit.