In article , Marin
writes
crab apple?

I thought crab apple was a full blown tree with small green apples, no?

A crab apple was originally a wild apple tree species which had small,
sharp tasting apples about the same as cherries.

Over many hundreds of years, gardeners (in the widest sense) have
carried out selective breeding, aiming for big and juicy fruit, and as a
result many hundreds of dessert and cooking apples have been developed,
as well as cider apples.

And other gardeners were selectively breeding for purely ornamental
purposes, so that now there are many ornamental varieties of crab apple,
for example, 'John Downie' with red fruits and 'Golden Hornet' with
bright yellow fruits.

So, I suppose a working definition might be that a crab apple is an
apple with small fruit grown for mainly ornamental purposes.
--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm