Soulard Apple Tree
The Soulard Apple (Malus Soulardi, Britt.) may con. fuse us. It is a hybrid of M. Ioensis and the common apple, ascaped from orchards-the trees that come from apple seeds and are not grafted. Such are our good-for-nothing roadside "wilding" trees, with gnarly fruit nobody can eat.The Soulard apple occurs locally from Minnesota to Texas, It is large leaved and stout of stature, with pink-flushed blossoms, like an orchard apple tree. But its woolly surfaces are often roughly rusty; its fruit is a flat crab apple on a stout stem, larger, sweeter and more edible than one expects it to be.
Because this species is hardy and disposed to vary and improve in the quality of its fruit in cultivation, horticulturists consider it a distinctly promising apple for the coldest of the prairie states. Several varieties have already been produced from it.