Apple

Apples (Malus) form a plant genus of the pome fruit family (Pyrinae) in the rose family (Rosaceae). The genus comprises about 42 to 55 species of deciduous trees and shrubs from forests and thickets of the northern temperate zone in Europe, Asia and North America, which have also given rise to a large number of often difficult-to-distinguish hybrids. By far the best known and economically very important species worldwide is the cultivated apple (Malus domestica).

The species of the genus Apples (Malus) are deciduous trees or shrubs. They are mostly unbranched. The alternate stem leaves are petiolate. The simple leaf blade is oval to ovate or elliptic. The leaf margins are usually serrated, rarely smooth, and sometimes lobed. The pedunculate flowers of apple trees are solitary or in umbellate panicled inflorescences. Commonly known are the more or less rounded, edible fruits. In some species they are inedible raw. The fleshy tissue normally referred to as the fruit does not arise from the ovary but from the flower axis; the biologist therefore refers to pseudo-fruits. More precisely, the apple fruit is a special form of the aggregate bellows fruit. A bellows consists of an ovary that grows together with itself. Within the pulp, the bellows-like carpel develops into a parchment-like case. The pulp itself contains, at most, scattered stone cell nests.