Malus coronaria often is a bushy shrub with rigid, contorted branches, but frequently becomes a small tree up to 10 metres (33 feet) tall, with a broad open crown.

Branchlets at first coated with thick white wool, later they become smooth reddish brown; they develop in their second year long, spur-like branches and sometimes absolute thorns 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) or more in length.

The corolla has five petals, is rose colored, ob ovate, rounded above, with long narrow claws, undulate or crenelate at margin, inserted on the calyx tube, imbricate in bud.

The pistil consists of five carpels inserted in the bottom of the calyx tube and united into an inferior ovary; styles five; stigma capitate; ovules two in each cell.

[4] Two varieties are known:[3] The species grows primarily in the Great Lakes Region and in the Ohio Valley, with outlying populations as far away as Alabama, eastern Kansas, and Long Island.

[6] Pehr Kalm, a disciple of 18-century botanist Carl Linnaeus, wrote of the fruit: The apples, or crabs, are small, sour and unfit for anything but to make vinegar of.