APPLE. The name applied to a tree be longing to the rose family of plants, as well as to its fruit. The common apple is known botanically as Pyres mules; the Crab Apples be longing to baceate. All the cultivated apples of the world have come from these two farms. The fruit of the apple is a pome, con sisting of a thickened fleshy portion, resulting from the development of the calyx, inelosing the horny eells forming the core and the true seeds.
The common apple, Pyres males, has been in cultivation since prehistoric times. Charred re mains of the fruit have been found in the mud of the lakes inhabited by the Lake Dwellers, and, aeeording to De Candolle, the tree was probably indigenous to Anatolia, the south of the Cau casus, and northern Russia, and its cultivation began at a very early date. The Siberian Crab, Pyres baceata, is a native of the north, and is of great importance to fruit-growers not only on account of its own hardy and resistant char acter, but also because it transmits much of its hardiness to its crosses with Pyres males, thus producing a fruit of good quality that can endure northern climates. Besides these
European apples, North America has several wild species which are more or less notable. Among these, the Prairie Apple, Pyres loensis, is perhaps the most promising from a horti cultural standpoint, because crosses between it and Pyres males (to which class the so-called Pyres soulardil undoubtedly belongs) are already valuable. The eastern wild apple, Pyres corona ria, is of little value for its fruit, hut its bloom is beautiful. China and Japan have native ap which are of little economic importance, but are interesting in that they carry the genus through the north temperate zone around the world.