[Sca-cooks] On apples

[Stefan li Rous]

Aodh highlighted about these particular crabapples:

<<< [1] On the old trees I knew of, these were not 'minor inconvenience'
thorns as on brambles, nor 'painful but dealable with' thorns as on roses.
These were great big two-to-four inch spikes, like blackthorn but even
bigger, that were a danger to life and limb. I still have a sizable scar on
my temple, just at the hairline, from where one of them gouged me. >>>

LOL. I assume that these thorns were some of the first things to be bred out of crabapples as they got cultivated and bred with other apples. This would help point to how old they might be, although todays genetic deciphering would of course be more certain.

Rather useful to keep ground animals from eating your fruit, when you are the tree. Not so good if you are the farmer. Although I guess it does help keep little boys from pilfering your apples. :-)

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****