Island Wild for Fri. Oct. 23, 2009
Our native Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca or Pyrus fusca), resembles a dwarf crabapple with almond-sized edible fruit. Photo by Christine Scott.
Red, green or gold … apples just naturally seem to belong amidst the warm colours of autumn. And whether we’re bobbing for this tasty fruit at a fall fair, wrapping them in caramel or baking them up in a pie, there’s no question that October is apple time.
The sweet, white-fleshed, fist-sized beauties we know today are a far cry from their wild ancestors. Without delving into the scientific aspects of pomology, early wild apples were only cherry-sized – and a bit sour – but early civilizations turned this “wild child” into one of the most sought-after fruits on earth through grafting and experimentation.
Meanwhile, far away across the sea, and shrouded in the mists of time, aboriginal peoples living along Canada’s west coast discovered their own wild crabapple thousands of years ago.
Our native Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca or Pyrus fusca), resembles a dwarf crabapple with almond-sized edible fruit. A delightful little “pomme” in every aspect, from its perfect mini-seeds to its colour and shape, the indigenous little crabapple likely resembles the diminutive ancestors of today’s cultivated apples.
The miniature egg-shaped apples became a vital food staple and trade item for coastal peoples, who harvested them in early fall and stored them in water-filled cedarwood boxes. So valuable were these vitamin-rich fruits that such a box could once be traded for 10 Hudson’s Bay blankets.
Along with western red-cedar and salmon, Pacific crabapple still holds its place as a keystone species for Pacific Northwest coastal peoples. It was so essential to the Gitga’at of B.C.’s northwest coast that they identified and named at least six different varieties.
The place to search for our wild crabapple is alongside estuaries and streams, where it forms shrubs to small trees from 2 to 12 m (6.5 - 40 ft.) tall. Thorn-like spur-shoots line the branches, sometimes fooling people into thinking they’ve found a hawthorn tree. The green leaves with toothed edges and pointed ends of this deciduous species turn to red, yellow or orange in the fall, and adding to the colour of our native landscape.
Come springtime, flat-topped flower clusters with an apple-blossom scent appear, followed in late summer by bunches of oval to cylindrical fruits (10-15 mm long) dangling from long red stalks. At first the fruits are green, turning yellow, pink or purplish-red. Fully ripe, this refreshing trailside treat tastes pleasantly tart.
Out in the woods, holding a cluster of little wild apples in hand, it’s hard not to dream of apple pie. But while two pounds of domestic apples make one 9-inch pie, it would take hundreds of these wee “pommes” to fill one pie shell.
Perhaps the moral of this story could be that our indigenous Pacific crabapple is best sampled fresh, leaving most of the fruit on the tree for birds and beasts. It’s important to always be mindful of the ethical use of native plants, and to think back several millennia to a time when aboriginal coastal peoples carefully tended these most valuable of their fruit trees.
Email Island Wild and Christine at: wildernesswest@shaw.ca.
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