1. [c. 1935] Crab apples were sour but Mum made a wonderful jelly with them [Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, August 2004].

2. As a child on the Dorset/Devon/Somerset borders during the 1960s, I heard it said of one of my aunts that she ‘had searched the orchard through and through until she found the crab’. (She had had many boyfriends before eventually marrying one who wasn’t considered very eligible) [Streatham, London, May 1991].

Images:  main, Chinnor Hill, Oxfordshire, September 2014; inset, Stamborough Park, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, October 2015.