Eriobotrya japonica Seeds | Loquat Japanese Medlar
LATIN NAME: Eriobotrya japonica
COMMON NAME: Loquat, Japanese Medlar, Japanese Plum
Plant Profile
The loquat breaks the normal calendar of fruit trees. Its big, rusty-backed leaves push flowers in autumn and winter, and the yellow, pear-shaped fruit ripens in late winter or early spring in mild climates, a season when little else on the tree is sweet. That off-cycle timing is the single fact that makes Eriobotrya japonica worth a place in any warm garden where you want fresh fruit before the apples and pears arrive.
The tree is a small evergreen of the rose family, easy to know by its foliage: large, leathery, deeply veined leaves with serrated edges and a dense rusty felt on the underside. From the leaf axils in the cool season come branched panicles of small white, sweetly scented flowers, and these set the clusters of fruit that hang through the low light of winter.
Turn a leaf and the orange-brown fuzz on the underside is the fastest field mark of the genus; no other common rosaceous fruit tree shows that rusty coat. The felt also helps the broad leaf hold moisture in dry warm air.
Because it blooms in autumn and winter the loquat depends on mild conditions and a late frost can spoil a crop, so site it against a warm wall in the cool edge of its range. The panicles open over weeks rather than all at once, stretching the harvest.
Harvest mature leaves, wipe them, and dry them slowly out of the sun, then steep a few in hot water for a pale, faintly bitter tea. The leaf keeps its character through the year.
Science & Biotechnology
The chemistry that draws the loquat into the literature sits mostly in the leaf. Loquat leaves carry triterpenes such as ursolic and oleanolic acid and a load of tannins, which is why the dried leaf is steeped into a traditional East Asian tea (biwa cha in Japan, pipa ye in China). The seeds, like apple pips, contain cyanogenic glycosides and are not eaten. This is a leaf crop and a fruit crop on one tree, with the compound story in the foliage.
Ursolic acid and its triterpene kin are the named compounds most often reported from loquat leaf and the reason the leaf, not the fruit, is the part studied. The tea is made from the leaf, never the seed.
The brown seeds inside the fruit hold amygdalin-type glycosides and are discarded, exactly as with apple and pear pips. The flesh is the safe, sweet part, and the leaf is the traditional prepared one. A single fruit holds a few seeds at its centre, easy to flick out as you halve it, and the rest of the fruit is ready to eat or cook without further fuss.
Uses & Benefits
In the kitchen the ripe loquat is eaten fresh, stewed into a tart compote, or made into jelly and a light wine; the leaf is dried and brewed as a mild tea. As a garden tree the loquat is valued for shade and for the bold evergreen shape that anchors a subtropical border.
Ripe loquats are sweet and a little perfumed; halve and stone them, and they poach in minutes into a sauce for yogurt or cake. The skin slips easily once the fruit is soft.
Growing from Seed
Each fruit holds one or more large brown stones, and these are the part to sow. The seed loses vigour if it dries out, so sow it fresh in a deep pot of open, free-draining mix and keep it warm and moist; loquat seedlings grow fast once the first leaves appear and hate a check from cold. Grow the young plant on in a pot until it is sturdy before setting it out.
Unlike many rosaceous stones, loquat seed is best sown as soon as it is cleaned and kept from drying, with steady warmth to bring the root. A deep tube spares the taproot.
The loquat sits with the apples, pears and hawthorns in the pome tribe, and a mixed warm orchard makes sense. Growers comparing kin will find them in our pages on Malus baccata, Pyrus betulifolia and Chaenomeles sinensis, with a berry in hawthorn.
Our Take
Grow a loquat if you want fruit in the quiet end of winter, when the orchard is otherwise bare. The rusty-backed leaves alone make it a handsome tree, and the leaf tea is a bonus you can harvest for years before the first real crop.
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