Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. X 
NO. 6 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. MAY 29. 1924 
Crabapples form one of the largest and most beautiful of the Arbor- 
etum groups of trees and during the last forty years a great deal of 
attention has been paid to it here; but the Arboretum contains many 
handsome but still very imperfectly known plants. It has failed to 
obtain a plant of the type of Malus pumila, a native of eastern 
Europe and western Asia, although it has a collection of numerous 
forms or hybrids of this plant. The species is the most valuable tree 
in the world as it is the origin of the orchard apples now cultivated in 
all the temperate parts of the world and produces high class fruit over 
a larger area than any other tree, and the wild type of such a tree, the 
origin of innumerable varieties of the apples of commerce, should cer- 
tainly find a place in every Arboretum worthy of the name. This type 
does not appear to be in any European garden and no one seems to know 
exactly where it grows. To find it an expedition will have to be made es- 
pecially for the purpose to some remote region of eastern Turkestan. 
It has not been possible, too, to obtain yet a plant of the wild form of 
Malus sylvestris, the species of western Europe which has also been more 
or less used in the development of the orchard apple and is greatly 
needed here. 
Hybrid Crabapples. The handsomest Crabapples in the collection are 
hybrids, at least they are nowhere known as wild plants and do not 
reproduce themselves from seeds, and can only be propagated by buds 
or grafts. The first of these supposed hybrids to reach Europe was 
Malus spectabilis which was sent from Canton to England in 1780. 
It appears to have been widely cultivated in Chinese gardens and flour- 
ishes in those of Peking. It was growing in the Elgin Botanic Garden 
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