Malus domestica

It resembles the wild crab apple but has thornless twigs, leaves densely felted beneath even in summer, and larger fruits; it cannot be sharply separated from Malus sylvestris.

Info Flora gives the flowering time of the cultivated apple in Switzerland as May.

The Czech Pladias database gives May as the flowering month, white flowers and insect pollination for the cultivated apple.

In Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, the start of apple bloom has moved markedly and statistically significantly earlier in recent decades.

In Switzerland the apple is cultivated as a fruit tree in many varieties and often escapes, in the hill and montane zone.

Info Flora classes the cultivated apple as a neophyte in Switzerland, a species that appeared in the region after 1500.

In 16 apple orchards within 20 km of Freiburg, observed in spring 2014, nine of ten flower visitors were honey bees.

In the same Freiburg orchards the most frequent wild bees were bumblebees, followed by Andrena mining bees, Osmia mason bees and Lasioglossum sweat bees.

The Freiburg study concludes that wild bee species with different tongue lengths, sizes and flight times complement each other in pollination and so contribute to reliable fruit set.

The Swiss research institute FiBL describes the red mason bee Osmia bicornis as particularly well suited to pollinating mid-early to late flowering fruit such as apple, pear and berries.

FiBL notes that the horned mason bee Osmia cornuta is active from 4 degrees C, whereas the honey bee flies only from about 10 degrees C.

A UK study in Kent concluded that insects are essential to the production of Cox and Gala apples and valued their pollination of these two varieties at 36.7 million pounds per year.