 It has been used by modern breeders to breed some red-leaved, red-flowered, and red-fruited domesticated apples and crabapples.One example is the Surprise, a pink-fleshed apple that was brought to the United States by German immigrants around 1840 and was later used by the horticulturist Albert Etter to breed some 30 pink- and red-fleshed varieties, the best-known of which is Pink Pearl.Another horticulturist, Niels Ebbesen Hansen, encountered "M. niedzwetskyana" in the Ili valley in what is now Kazakhstan during his 1897 expedition to Russia, and began two breeding programs based on this unusual fruit, one aimed at developing a cold-hardy cooking and eating apple, and the other aimed at developing ornamental crabapples.