Crab Apple - Malus sylvestris

Shrub or tree to 10 metres. Flowers pinkish or white 30 to 40 mm in rounded clusters, fragrant. Fruit the familiar apple but smaller than the domestic apple, usually yellow or yellow/green. Under surfaces of mature leaves and the pedicels are hairless.

Orchard Apple (Malus pumila or domestica) is similar but has hairy leaf undersurfaces and pedicels and usually has larger fruit - however, the two species can be very hard to tell apart.  Self-set orchard apples often have small yellowish sour fruits.

Leaves glabrous when mature; pedicels and outside of calyx glabrous

Photos showing underside of mature leaves, pedicels (flower-stalks) and calyx.  It is not possible to verify this from general photos or from fruits

Woods and hedgerows.

May to June.

Deciduous.

Quite common in most of Britain.

Once thought to be quite common in Leicestershire and Rutland - In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 494 of the 617 tetrads. Now thought to have been over-recorded instead of orchard apple, which is commonly naturalised