Mespilus germanica Seeds | Medlar

Medlar fruit, brown and flattened with an open calyx, on a small crooked tree — Medlar (*Mespilus germanica*): Rosaceae, the bletted autumn fruit of old European orchards and hedgerows.

LATIN NAME: Mespilus germanica

COMMON NAME: Medlar

Plant Profile

The medlar is a small, broad-headed tree of the rose family, rarely more than six metres, with a twisted trunk, grey bark and a crown of long, dull-green, heavily veined leaves. It is grown for its fruit, which is one of the strangest in the orchard: a flattened, brownish, five-crowned pome, two to three centimetres across, hard and astringent when picked and edible only after it has been left to soften and brown.

The flowers are unusually large for a fruit tree, up to five centimetres across, white and self-fertile, opening in late May after the apples, which makes it a reliable cropper in cold districts. Autumn colour is a good yellow-brown, and the bare winter outline, with its crooked branches and persistent fruit, has a character that has kept the tree in gardens since the Romans carried it north.

Science & Biotechnology

The softening process is called bletting, and it is not decay in the ordinary sense: the fruit’s own enzymes break down starch and tannin while the skin holds, so that the flesh turns brown, soft and sweet with a flavour often compared to date and apple butter. Bletting happens naturally after frost, but frost is not required; a cool, dry shelf will do it in three to six weeks, and in cold climates the fruit is often picked hard and brought indoors.

Mespilus germanica is the only species in its genus across most of its range, which makes it genetically narrow, though a second species was found in Arkansas in the 1990s and is now treated separately. The species is self-fertile and sets good crops without a partner, unusual among the pome fruits, and its large flowers are worked by bees in weather too cool for most orchard blossom.

Uses & Benefits

Medlar is a fruit for preserves rather than for the table. Bletted, it is sieved into a thick, spiced paste eaten with cheese, made into a clear jelly that sets beautifully because the fruit is high in pectin, or fermented into a country wine. In Britain the tree was a standard orchard subject until the eighteenth century, when sugar became cheap and the fruit’s awkwardness stopped being worth the trouble.

As a garden tree it has real merits: it is small, it flowers late enough to escape frost, it crops reliably, and it has good autumn colour and interesting winter outline. It also takes well to being trained against a wall, where the fruit ripens more dependably in a short season, and it can be grown in a large pot for years. The fruit hangs on the tree long after leaf fall, which extends its ornamental season well into winter.

Growing from Seed

Seed is doubly dormant, with a root embryo that needs warmth and a shoot that needs cold, so a single stratification will not do. Give the seed three months at about twenty degrees, then three months at four degrees, and sow in late winter. Germination is slow and irregular; a proportion will not appear until the second year.

Seedlings vary in fruit size and in how readily they blet, so named forms are grafted onto hawthorn or quince, which also keeps the tree smaller. If you do raise seedlings, grow them on in deep pots for two years and plant out in autumn, in any reasonable soil in sun or light shade. The tree fruits on short spurs on wood two years old and older, so heavy winter pruning removes the crop.

Our Take

A piece of living orchard history with excellent jelly fruit, if you can accept a tree that fruits brown. Wait for the fruit to brown before you judge it, and the flavour will explain itself.

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