crab apple

noun

a small, sour, wild apple.

any of various small, tart, cultivated varieties of apple, used for making jelly and preserves.

any tree bearing such fruit.

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Origin:
1705–15

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

crab apple

—n
1.	any of several rosaceous trees of the genus Malus that have white, pink, or red flowers and small sour apple-like fruits
2.	the fruit of any of these trees, used to make jam

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia

crab apple

any of several small trees of the genus Malus, in the rose family (Rosaceae), native to North America and Asia. Crabs are widely grown for their attractive growth habit, spring flower display, and decorative fruit. The fragrant five-petaled, white, pink, carmine, or purplish flowers appear early in showy masses. The fruits are much smaller and more tart than the common apple but are suitable for jellies, preserves, and cider. The tree itself is stiffer in form and more spiny than the common apple.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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Matching Quote

"Nevertheless, our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal crab-apple, Malus coronaria, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation."... But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple trees, which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose story we have to tell."

-Henry David Thoreau