Malus Libertas

Beyond a death wagon close the roundabout, Crown Quay Road heads down toward the head of Milton Creek. I was curious about plants striving to grow through the galvanised roadside fence and particularly three apple trees sending abundant fruit over the top like paratroops.

They look like wild crab apples, but three in a row seems unusual and the leaves are less triangular that I imagined they should be. Perhaps these were originally ‘ornamentals’  from a garden centre? Richard Mabey’s essay ‘The Perfumier and the Stinkhorn’ reminded me about Thoreau’s love of wild apples. “He contrives a romantic fantasy of varieties defined and named not by their botanical qualities, but by where they grow,  the moments they are picked [or] the mood of the picker’ (p51). I imagined mine, striving to escape over an unfriendly hurdle as malus libertas, the freedom apple.