Apple tree seedling

[veggiechicken]

Beneath a big old apple tree (believed to be Keswick Codlin) I've found a seedling apple tree, about 3' tall. I'm assuming it has grown from a fallen apple. What are the chances of it producing decent fruit or could it turn into a crab apple?
Should I dig it up and plant it elsewhere in the garden?
I'll take a photo tomorrow

[FB.]

Apple seedling survivability "in the wild" is very poor. The fact that it has survived so far suggests that it could have valuable vigour, resilience and disease-resistance.
Definitely worth keeping for trialling its fruit quality/quantity - you never know it might produce good (or at least acceptable) fruit.
Leave it until it is dormant before moving it; young apple seedlings often depend on a single large taproot which goes deep in the soil and can be difficult to get out intact (I call the seedling roots "apple parsnips" because of their appearance), so if you damage that dominant root while the tree has leaves, it might die.

[veggiechicken]

Thank you
Its certainly resilient as its in the middle of a patch of brambles and raspberries that I'm clearing - and its been like that for several years In fact I wonder whether it ever saw daylight

[FB.]

Can you take a picture - especially of a couple of leaves, with a 1p coin for scaling?

(I have an idea but I don't want to influence you)

[veggiechicken]

Will do that now - if I can find a 1p coin

[veggiechicken]

Photos of seedling

[veggiechicken]

Photos of ? mother tree

You can just about see the seedling in the gap between the raspberry canes!!

[boundtothesoil]

I'd stake it with a bamboo cane, temporarily, if it were mine, just in case. The taller it grows, and the more leaves it produces up the main stem, the sooner it will come into flower. You need about 70 successive leaves before the juvenile (non-flowering ) phase is over according to the scientific literature. The best of my three year old apple seedlings have main stems around 8 ft tall and I'm hoping they will flower next year.

[veggiechicken]

Thanks Btts A stake's a good idea as it is a bit vulnerable there!. I intend to clear more of the undergrowth around it - in fact its a miracle I didn't pull it out with the rest of the stuff. Sounds like it has quite a few years to go before it flowers!!

[FB.]

Sounds like it has quite a few years to go before it flowers!!

Not if you take some grafts and put them onto a mature tree.
If you graft some onto an older tree you could be sampling the fruit as soon as summer 2015.

Bud/shield grafts can be done now, and for the next few weeks.

I didn't manage to note any particular features from the pictures.

[veggiechicken]

What sort of features were you looking for FB?

[FB.]

What sort of features were you looking for FB?

Anything which stood out as unusual.
Often - but not always - the size of the leaves and the size of the fruit are correlated.
The shape, size and colour (even the shade of green) of the leaves can also give some clues about what you might get.
Also any signs of disease - if it was sickly at such a young age it would not bode well for when it is mature.

But in the case of your seedling, nothing jumps out at me.