Bred out of the Morden Research Station in Manitoba, Trailman is an apple crab (cross between apple and a crabapple) with Trail and Osman as its parents. Introduced in 1973, Trailman bears heavy and consistent orange/peach colored 1-1.5” little apples. In terms of the flavor, it’s actually quite sweet but with a pretty intense tart kick to it. Would probably be too tart for some, but if left on the tree longer, then it becomes far sweeter. It’s also got a nutty flavor similar to chestnut crab and it also has a good crunch. Would probably be excellent in cider.

In terms of hardiness, Trailman would survive easily into the -50Fs and possibly -60F. It suffered zero damage during Ed Schultz’ -47F that he saw in January of 2024 at his orchard outside of Bozeman.

We unfortunately ran out of Dolgo before we got around to grafting Trailman, and we were only able to graft it onto the less hardy M26, which is hardy to only -40F. That said, if you are in an area that sees colder than -40F, you could plant the graft below the soil line so that Trailman would grow on its own roots.