COMPLiMENTARY 
NEW SERIES VOL. VII 
NO. 2 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. APRIL 29. 1921 
Asiatic Crabapples. Some of the earliest of these trees are already 
in flower, twenty-five days earlier than last year, and when this Bulle- 
tin reaches its Massachusetts’ readers it is probable that a large num- 
ber of them will be at their best and as full of flowers as they have 
ever been here before, for this year all plants of the Rose Family are 
unusually full of flowers and flower-buds. To northern parks and gar- 
dens no genus of small trees and shrubs has given greater beauty than 
Malus, the name which is now correctly given to all Apple-trees, es- 
pecially the wild types and their first hybrids generally known as Crab- 
apples in distinction from the Apple-trees of orchards which are hybrids 
or selected and improved forms of European and western Asiatic Crab- 
apples. All the species of Malus hybridize so freely among themselves 
that it is not possible to raise from seeds gathered on trees in a 
large collection of species like that of the Arboretum plants similar to 
those from which the seeds were taken. Among such seedlings there 
may be plants handsomer than their seed-bearing parent, although 
quite different from it, and among a hundred seedlings raised from the 
seeds of one tree it is not usual to find two exactly alike. The pos- 
sible variation in seedling plants produced by a single Crabapple-tree 
is well shown in one of the parks of the city of Rochester, New York, 
in which there are growing some twenty-five trees raised several years 
ago from seeds gathered from one plant of Malus Jloribunda, a tree 
introduced many years ago into our gardens from Japan and by many 
students believed to be a hybrid of doubtful parentage. These Roches- 
ter seedlings now produce abundant crops of fruit. This varies on 
different trees from the size of a small pea to an inch or an inch and 
5 
