Question
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Please help us identify this berry bush. We'd like to know if the fruit is edible. We thought it was a blueberry because of the crown at the bottom. But the leaves don't look like blueberry leaves. The fruit is green and some are turning red. Please see attached image. Thank you for your help!
AnswerThis one looks like a crabapple. The somewhat lobed leaves are distinctive. The fruit are smallish. It could be a hawthorn, but that would have smooth, inch-long thorns on the branches, which I do not see in the picture.
Incidentally you seem to have a bad case of cedar-apple rust. The orange spots on leaves would be the rust, the underside would have several pointy projections from each spot, which release the spores. These then travel to some juniper or cedar tree where they form woody galls that turn juicy orange in the spring and spread spores back to your crabapple tree. Hawthorns, apples and pears get similar rusts.
