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Estonia's largest crab apple tree grows in the Karksi primeval valley in Viljandimaa. The Oti crab apple is about two hundred years old and 18 metres high. It has a trunk circumference of 4,2 metres at  70 centimetres, and a crown circumference of 32 metres.

 

In Estonia’s western provinces crab apple trees are quite common in nature. They can grow as bushes, or as trees with large, dense and widely spreading crowns. Externally they remind of the common cultivated apple tree. Crab apple trees are protected.

 

The undersides of the leaves of the cultivated apple tree are densely hairy, those of the crab apple have a bare underside, and are broadly egg shaped, with a heart-shaped base and serrated edges (only the young pale green leaves in spring are sparsely hairy). The twigs are thorny but the thorns have blunt tips.

 

Fruits have a diameter of up to three centimetres. They are small and round, when ripe in autumn yellowish green, red on the sunny side cheek. The taste is very sour. The fruits stay on the branches even after the frosts, and in the old times they were used then for food; the taste improves then too.