Locating wild apples and crabs on your property

Tap

Well-Known Member
The flowering period is a great time to locate wild mast trees. In our area, we are in the peak season for apple, crab, Hawthorn, and Dogwood blooming. We are slightly past the pear bloom. Depending on your latitude, you may be already past the bloom stage and in other more Northerly areas, it may not have happened yet.

Individual trees are super easy to locate during the flower stage. A soft met tree full of blooms sticks out like a sore thumb among the surrounding cover.
It's pretty amazing how soon after the bloom that tiny fruits begin to show. It happens fast...in just a couple weeks.

It's a good time to notice where they are, either for maintenance purposes, stand locations, or just even discovering that these trees even exist where you own or hunt.
Grapes and other smothering vines quickly blanket an otherwise producing mast tree. Im already finding vines on my wild trees that I thought I'd been keeping under control. Waiting until after the bloom makes it more difficult to identify mast trees that need some attention.

Some of these trees lurk for years and we don't even realize they are there. Sometimes it's because they are just now getting old enough to bear fruit, and other times, we don't realize they exist because they are choked out with vines or other competition. Learning their locations can show us where some TSI needs done, or where we need to plant a pollinator species, or where we want to hang a stand for early bow season. In our area, even apple trees that don't bear fruit are often preferred species for scrape trees and licking branches.
And if you do have soft mast trees that bloom, but never produce fruit, there is a good chance that there are no pollinator species close by. Planting something like a Dolgo next to a non-producing bloomer may be all you need to do to add a valuable food source.
Take notice of blooming trees.
 
The flowering period is a great time to locate wild mast trees. In our area, we are in the peak season for apple, crab, Hawthorn, and Dogwood blooming. We are slightly past the pear bloom. Depending on your latitude, you may be already past the bloom stage and in other more Northerly areas, it may not have happened yet.

Individual trees are super easy to locate during the flower stage. A soft met tree full of blooms sticks out like a sore thumb among the surrounding cover.
It's pretty amazing how soon after the bloom that tiny fruits begin to show. It happens fast...in just a couple weeks.

It's a good time to notice where they are, either for maintenance purposes, stand locations, or just even discovering that these trees even exist where you own or hunt.
Grapes and other smothering vines quickly blanket an otherwise producing mast tree. Im already finding vines on my wild trees that I thought I'd been keeping under control. Waiting until after the bloom makes it more difficult to identify mast trees that need some attention.

Some of these trees lurk for years and we don't even realize they are there. Sometimes it's because they are just now getting old enough to bear fruit, and other times, we don't realize they exist because they are choked out with vines or other competition. Learning their locations can show us where some TSI needs done, or where we need to plant a pollinator species, or where we want to hang a stand for early bow season. In our area, even apple trees that don't bear fruit are often preferred species for scrape trees and licking branches.
And if you do have soft mast trees that bloom, but never produce fruit, there is a good chance that there are no pollinator species close by. Planting something like a Dolgo next to a non-producing bloomer may be all you need to do to add a valuable food source.
Take notice of blooming trees.
Its actually past peak here for some of our blooms and for others, they are just starting to pop.

These are not the greatest of pictures, but you can see the crab blooms among the other foliage. 3 weeks ago, or 3 weeks from now, these trees would blend right in and wouldn't be noticeable.
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These are all wild crabs in bloom. I did not plant them. This was a hayfield until the early 1990s that I left to revert to cover.
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What this photo doesn't show are all the pear trees that are mixed in. They already went thru the flower stage and now have pears the size of peas growing on them.
6f1bf06bfeae2ecf3b62a6cf8adac52b.jpg


The tree with the white blooms is a wild Hawthorn. Also a great wildlife tree. Some of the best scrapes on my place are under Hawthorn. I can't believe a buck would choose to rake his face thru those thorns!
43b89e0bc9f76405f76393d08cc97c62.jpg


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I'm amazed at how you guys up north find so many wild apples and crabapples. That is almost non-existent here. However, I am constantly finding wild persimmons on my farm. The shape of the tree and leaves are the best way for me to see one at a distance.

Up until a few years ago we would not find any wild pears, but now there are many. The problem is that they are all Callery - the offspring of Bradfords. Of course, these can be topworked. I've done it successfully.
 
We are close to apple bloom but the plant for us to mark right now is service berry. It just began bloom here yesterday and is a very preferred browse tree. I love your fruit tree edge Tap; that is awesome!
 
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We are almost too far north for finding wild persimmons, there's a few on fencerows in farm country, and I've found a few in the woods. Wild crabs and pears are more common, and the random apple trees around abandoned farmstead. I think this reminder is good for me to spend more time looking for these trees, several years ago I found a big pear in the woods, overshadowed by other trees that I then cut to let in some sunshine. A bumper crop of pears the next fall got me a ten point buck on the first day of archery.
 
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We are close to apple bloom but the plant for us to mark right now is service berry. It just began bloom here yesterday and is a very preferred browse tree. I love your fruit tree edge Tap; that is awesome!
What even more awesome is I didn't plant 90% of it... Ma Nature did it for me. Maintenance of it is another issue though. Grapevines, oriental bittersweet, mile a minute and multi flora rose constantly invades. There's a healthy crop of poison ivy, too.

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I had a wild pear on my old place that never produced until I planted my orchard over 1600 feet away. That apparently is close enough to get pollinated.
 
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Flowers are also a great way to find the BAD things as well....around here the Jap Bush Honeysuckle is starting to flower.
 
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I'm amazed at how you guys up north find so many wild apples and crabapples. That is almost non-existent here. However, I am constantly finding wild persimmons on my farm. The shape of the tree and leaves are the best way for me to see one at a distance.

Up until a few years ago we would not find any wild pears, but now there are many. The problem is that they are all Callery - the offspring of Bradfords. Of course, these can be topworked. I've done it successfully.
I think that in areas where soft mast is sparse is where its even more useful to locate it. An odd apple tree where few others exist is more of a magnet than in areas where they are common.
 
I think that in areas where soft mast is sparse is where its even more useful to locate it. An odd apple tree where few others exist is more of a magnet than in areas where they are common.

That's true but the joy of finding something special like that is more than killing a big deer......;)
 
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That's true but the joy of finding something special like that is more than killing a big deer......;)
And releasing and saving those trees whether they are unusual to the area or not offers huge payback for the effort. And here where apples are seemingly everywhere it turned out to be big payback for those that released them over the years. What has happened is that apples are dying out on many properties in the area seemingly mostly thru natural succession.
 
I think that in areas where soft mast is sparse is where its even more useful to locate it. An odd apple tree where few others exist is more of a magnet than in areas where they are common.
I’ve found that just an odd apple tree is a rare thing. Usually there are others that just need finding. It came from somewhere and probably one to two hundred yards there could be more just not visible or doing so poor that their not recognized. Although a single tree could be an attraction I have found that myriads of apples are a far better attractant. Abundance seems to equal attraction.
 
And releasing and saving those trees whether they are unusual to the area or not offers huge payback for the effort. And here where apples are seemingly everywhere it turned out to be big payback for those that released them over the years. What has happened is that apples are dying out on many properties in the area seemingly mostly thru natural succession.
It’s amazing how releasing trees works. I’ve had trees that you would swear are dead, once released within 2 years are producing large numbers of apples. Apples live a long time naturally but, when maples and cherry start to canopy over the apples they suffer.
 
It’s amazing how releasing trees works. I’ve had trees that you would swear are dead, once released within 2 years are producing large numbers of apples. Apples live a long time naturally but, when maples and cherry start to canopy over the apples they suffer.
That is one of the points I'm trying to make with this thread. But sometimes the "locating them" is the hard part. Noticing a blooming tree among a canopy of competition can help us discover a tree that we never knew existed. Sometimes its a lone survivor in a long-gone homestead. The only things that remain from the old home site is an old stone foundation and a struggling soft mast tree.
 
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I find them usually in brush. Sometimes they look just like the rest of the brush but, I can pick them out quite regular. 4-5 ft high nothing but a twig. They would never have a chance out in the open as the deer will nip them off long before you can spot them. Brush piles, field edges or old fence lines seem to be good places to look.
 
Love finding those wild apples when up in Yankee Land. I think it'd be fun to go up there one winter and get a bunch of scions to graft to see what I ended up with.
 
I’ve found that just an odd apple tree is a rare thing. Usually there are others that just need finding. It came from somewhere and probably one to two hundred yards there could be more just not visible or doing so poor that their not recognized. Although a single tree could be an attraction I have found that myriads of apples are a far better attractant. Abundance seems to equal attraction.

We have had that experience also Buckly. Our normal pattern is to mark a hundred or so trees and then pick the clumps with the most trees and work on those first. My favorite spots here are the many small knolls rising out of the wetter areas; it is common as you said to see one and then mark it and before you know it you've got a dozen or so together that had previously gone unnoticed.

LLC and anyone else on the forum you are welcome to visit this property for winter scions anytime: I keep an extra pair of snowshoes around. We have pear trees as well but though the deer eat them immediately they are small and not anything special as far as I know.
 
LLC and anyone else on the forum you are welcome to visit this property for winter scions anytime: I keep an extra pair of snowshoes around.

Man, I would LOVE to do that. I'll put that on my adventures list for sure. I know when I've been in the Rochester area in the late summer I've seen all kinds of wild trees on the Throughway and side roads but always the wrong time of year to get scions.
 
I'd love to have you visit; we have a couple of thousand released apple trees and I have friends that have some also although not as many as here. So keep it in mind, early March is probably the most consistently stable time to travel in and out of this area. And we have the option then to hire a guide and drift boat the salmon river for steelhead then also if the weather permits of course and if you like fishing for winter steelhead. Chummer has some of the rarest wild apples in the area ( those that survive incredible temperatures) and maybe we could coax him to steal a few of his scions.
 
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