Glossary · Fruit
Crab apple
Definition
A small, hard, very acidic and often astringent apple, whether a wild species or a small-fruited cultivar. Crabs are used as orchard pollinators, occasionally as a source of acid and tannin, and traditionally for verjuice.
- Subject
- Fruit
In more detail
The wild European crab, Malus sylvestris, is a genuine species and a hedgerow tree; many so-called crabs in orchards are seedlings of cultivated apples. The distinction matters for identification but not much for the mill, where any crab is a small parcel of acid.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Fruit
Malus domestica
The cultivated apple, the species to which all cider apple cultivars belong. It is a hybrid complex rather than a clean wild species, which is why its botanical name has repeatedly been revised.
Fruit
Wilding
A tree grown from a chance seedling rather than grafted from a known cultivar, and the fruit it bears. Wildings supplied much of the fruit in old hedgerow and farm orchards.
Orchard
Pollinator
A cultivar planted to supply compatible pollen to the cropping variety, or — in the other sense of the word — the insect that carries it. Crab apples are often used as pollen sources because they flower long and heavily.
Fruit
Sharp
In the Long Ashton classification, a cider apple high in acid and low in tannin. Sharps supply freshness and lower the pH of a blend into a range where spoilage organisms are less comfortable.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.