The hermaphrodite flowers appear in May, slightly preceding hawthorn, have white or pinkish petals and are insect-pollinated.

For the European wild apple, these refugia seem to have constituted southern France and northern Spain, the Balkans and possibly the Carpathians, respectively.

[3] From there, it recolonized the rest of Europe following the glacial retreat at the onset of the Holocene, and the colonization paths find themselves reflected in its modern distribution and genetic structure.

[3] In the past M. sylvestris was thought to be the most important ancestor of the cultivated apple (M. domestica), which has since been shown to have been primarily derived from the central Asian species M. sieversii.

In a study from Mols, Denmark, it was determined that cattle accounted for the bulk of dispersal, followed by horses, despite the presence of wild animals.

[7] Threats include the introgression from domesticated apples, the lack of natural regeneration and modern forestry practice, which promotes the closure of forest canopy cover, as opposed to the formerly prevailing coppice.

[10][11] In many aspects, the wild apple exhibits adaptations to grazing and the presence of large herbivores, and consequently also a high degree of dependence on them.

Additionally, while research indicates the widespread existence of half-open savanna ecosystems during Europe's prehistory, shaped and maintained by megafauna,[13][14] this is no more the case.

Nowadays, the landscape in many parts of Europe is marked by closed-canopy forest, often intensively managed, coupled with agricultural fields and urban spaces, with little else and few transitional zones such as mantle and fringe vegetation.