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Malus fusca, the only native Apple-tree of the Pacific States, where 
it ranges from Alaska to southern California, is in flower. This differs 
from the other American Crab Apples in its short-oblong, yellow-green 
flushed with red or nearly entirely red fruit from half an inch to three- 
quarters of an inch long, without the waxy exudation which is peculiar 
to the eastern American species, and with thin dry flesh. The calyx 
of the flower, unlike that of the eastern species, but like that of many 
Asiatic species, falls from the partly grown fruit. 
Malus angustifolia is the last Crab Apple in the Arboretum to flower. 
This is a tree sometimes thirty feet tall with a trunk eight or ten inches 
in diameter, wide-spreading branches, bright pink exceedingly fragrant 
flowers an inch in diameter, and depressed-globose fruit. From the 
other species it differs in the only slightly lobed or serrate leaves on 
the ends of vigorous shoots and in the rounded apex of the leaves on 
flower-bearing branchlets. Malus angustifolia is a southern species 
which naturally does not grow north of southeastern Virginia and 
southern Illinois, ranging to northern Florida and western Louisiana. 
Plants raised here many years ago from seed gathered in northern 
Florida are perfectly hardy in the Arboretum where they bloom every 
year late in May and have proved to be handsome and valuable plants 
here. The other American species, M. glabrata of the high valleys of 
the mountains of North Carolina, M. lancifolia, widely distributed from 
Pennsylvania to Missouri and western North Carolina, and Malus hrac- 
tata, a common species from Missouri to Florida, with many of the 
varieties of Malus ioensis are now established in the Arboretum but 
the plants are still too young to flower. 
Malus Soulardii, which is believed to be a natural hybrid between M. 
ioensis and some form of the orchard Apple {M. pumila) which, not rare 
and widely distributed in the middle west, is a tree as it grows in the 
Arboretum, nearly as broad as it is high with spreading, slightly droop¬ 
ing branches. Last year it was thickly covered with its pale pink fra¬ 
grant flowers, which, for ten days at least, made it one of the most 
attractive objects in the Crabapple Collection at the eastern base of 
Peter's Hill. This year it has bloomed only sparingly. It is a curious 
fact that M. Soulardii flowers in the Arboretum fully two weeks earlier 
than either of its supposed parents. Several varieties of Soulard's Crab 
are distinguished by western pomologists. Some of them are in the 
Arboretum collection, but the “Fluke Apple" is the only one which 
has flowered here yet. This resembles Soulard’s Crab in size and shape, 
and in the color of its equally abundant flowers, and as an ornamental 
plant is of equal value. 
Malus Dawsonii is a hybrid of the western M. fusca and the common 
Apple which appeared in the Arboretum many years ago from seed 
collected in Oregon. It has grown to more than double the size of M. 
fusca, to which it shows its relationship in the oblong fruit of the shape 
and color of that of its Oregon parent but of about twice the size. The 
leaves are less pubescent than those of the common Apple, and the 
flowers are rather larger. The hybrid blooms at about the same time 
as M. ioensis and a few days earlier than M. fusca. 
