yess!on mountain Nebrodi, Sicily, is discovered by Horto Botanical of Palermo director Francesco Maria Raimondo, one malus,named "malus crescimannoi" for tribute to Giulio Crescimanno.
Thank you Eric for the link. Most interesting alex, This guy Francesco Maria Raimonda must be really dedicated to find a new apple. Most people would probably just have passed it by, as JUST an apple tree.
Next step is for species determination to be reviewed by peers. Brief translated note at page linked to above makes it sound like this is thought to have something to do with orchard apple lineage, making me think there may be plenty of room for interpretation. Which there often is anyway, some botanists being lumpers and other splitters. With Rosaceae in particular there is also often the problem of apomixis, resulting in small self-replicating clonal populations that some interpret as full species and others do not.
Sicily is one amazing "states"of Italy , and very interesting for nature, some years ago was discovered one Zelkova named zelkova Sicula ,also are present big holly tre ,wiht onme estimated age of 200 years..
they are all thought to derive from possibly just one clone, or at the most only a very few distinct individuals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelkova_sicula
