plumleaf crabapple, Malus prunifolia

Plumleaf crabapple is a globally endangered species in its native China. What you see here is almost certainly not a plumleaf crab. It's part of a complex complex (two different words, depending on which syllable you empasize). This entry begins some short discussions of those botanical terms used yesterday to describe knotweed. Populations of both crabs and knotweeds are parts of what botanists might call a complex. That is a large group of plants with a complicated variety of characteristics. Those characters are enough alike that you might consider them all one species, but variable enough to make you doubt yourself if you did. So, is this a plumleaf crab? Or is it part of a swarm of plants that defy assignment to a single species. On our continent, plumleaf crab or something like it has been reported wild from CT, IL, MA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NY, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WA, WI, NB, and NS. Lenawee Co MI, 5/9/11. Rose family, Rosaceae.