Crab Apple Beauties

     The many kinds of crab apples are small trees that are native to North America, and commonly planted on lawns for their lovely flowers and variety of beautifully colored fruits, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They have multitudes of pink or white blossoms in April that are visited and pollinated by bees and other kinds of insects.  The fertilized blooms produce tart, berry-like fruits that ripen by autumn and are attractive to see at that time.  Those fruits are brightly-colored, including being reddish, orange or yellow, depending on the variety of tree, and add to the beauties of fall.       
     Every autumn I visit wild crab apple trees along hedgerows, roadsides and streams to see their beautiful fruits, and what kinds of wildlife are eating them.  Crab apple fruits are eaten by a variety of birds, mammals and insects, and box turtles, which are a kind of reptile, through fall.  And the warm-blooded birds and mammals continue consuming them in winter.
     Individual mockingbirds and gray catbirds and flocks of American robins, cedar waxwings and
starlings are some of the bird species that feed on them in autumn.  And all these birds, except the migrant catbirds, ingest them through winter.  Those birds add their beauties to that of the crab apple fruits while in the trees to eat them. 
     The birds digest the pulp of each berry-like fruit, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings as they fly about the countryside.  The seeds are thus spread far and wide, and if not eaten by mice or squirrels, may sprout into new crab apple trees some distance from the parent trees.  In this way, the birds help insure part of their annual food supply into the future.  And, in this way, some cultivated varieties of crab apples planted on lawns escape into the wild.
     A variety of mammals also eat crab apples in the trees or on the ground, depending on the species.  Some of the mammals most likely to eat those fruits are black bears, white-tailed deer, a variety of mice and squirrels, chipmunks, wood chucks, cottontail rabbits, skunks, opossums, raccoons, and red and gray foxes.  Those furry creatures fatten up for winter by eating crab apples. And some of the seeds in the crab apples are also spread by these critters.
     During September and into October or November until cold kills them or sends them to cover, several kinds of insects sip the fermenting juices of damaged and rotting crab apples, as they do on other kinds of fruits.  Yellow jackets, bald-faced hornets, a few kinds of wasps, several types of flies, ants, and certain species of butterflies, including, mourning cloaks, question marks, hackberries and buckeyes, are some of those insect species.  Those insects, and the birds and mammals, help make crab apple trees more interesting in autumn.      
     Box turtles that live where crab apple trees grow feed on many of the fruits that fall to the ground.  Those fruits help fatten the omnivorous turtles before their winter sleep in the forest floor. 
     Look for crab apple trees this fall or winter.  They have beauty in their fruits, and in the interesting critters that feed on them.