medlar

Medlar
Common Medlar foliage and fruit
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Rosales
Family:	Rosaceae
Subfamily:	Maloideae or Spiraeoideae [1]
Genus:	Mespilus Bosc ex Spach
Species
Mespilus canescens Mespilus germanica

Common-Medlar flowers

Medlar fruit, cv. 'Nefle Precoce'

Medlar (Mespilus) is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the subfamily Maloideae of the family Rosaceae. One, Common Medlar Mespilus germanica, is a long-known native of southwest Asia and possibly also southeastern Europe, and the other, Stern's Medlar Mespilus canescens, was recently (1990) discovered in North America.

They feature an unusual apple-like fruit, which requires bletting to eat, and was historically very common, though it is now rare.

Fruit

Medlar fruit are very hard and acidic. They become edible after being softened ("bletted") by frost, or naturally in storage given sufficient time. Once softening begins, the skin rapidly takes a wrinkled texture and turns dark brown, and the inside reduces to a consistency and flavour reminiscent of apple sauce. They can then be eaten raw, often consumed with cheese as a dessert, although they are also used to make medlar jelly and wine. Another dish is "medlar cheese", which is similar to lemon curd, being made with the fruit pulp, eggs, and butter.

Cultivars of Mespilus germanica that are grown for their fruit include 'Hollandia', 'Nottingham', and 'Russian'^[2], 'Dutch' (also known as 'Giant' or 'Monstrous'), 'Royal', 'Breda giant', and 'Large Russian'^[3]

External images
	Half-bletted medlar, showing both white (ripe, unbletted) and brown (bletted) flesh[4]

Plant

Medlars are deciduous large shrubs or small trees growing up to 8 m tall. The leaves are dark green and elliptic, six to fifteen centimetres long and three to four centimetres wide. The leaves turn a spectacular red in autumn before falling. The five-petalled white flowers, produced in late spring, are hermaphrodite and pollinated by bees. The fruit is a pome, two to three centimetres in diameter, with wide-spreading persistent sepals giving a "hollow" appearance to the fruit; it is matte brown in M. germanica and glossy red in M. canescens.

History

The medlar is native to Iran and has an ancient history of cultivation; it was grown by the ancient Greeks and Romans, beginning in the 2nd century BCE. The medlar was a very popular fruit during the Victorian era; however, it is a fruit which is now rarely appreciated except in certain areas, such as the north of Iran, Macedonia, Bulgaria and in northern Greece.

Related plants

The genus Eriobotrya (loquats) was once considered to be closely related to Mespilus, and is still sometimes called the "Japanese Medlar". Within subfamily Spiraeoideae Mespilus is most closely related to Crataegus, Amelanchier, Peraphyllum, and Malacomeles^[5].

In literature

A fruit which is rotten before it is ripe, the medlar is used figuratively in literature as a symbol of prostitution or premature destitution. For example, in the Prologue to The Reeve's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer's character laments his old age, comparing himself to the medlar, which he names using the slang term "open-arse":

This white top writeth myne olde yeris;

Myn herte is mowled also as myne heris —

But if I fare as dooth an open-ers.

That ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wers,

Til it be roten in mullok or in stree.

We olde men, I drede, so fare we:

Til we be roten, kan we nat be rype;

In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Lucio excuses his denial of past fornication because "they would else have married me to the rotten medlar." (IV.iii.171).

In Shakespeare's As You Like It, Rosalind makes a complicated pun involving grafting her interlocuter with the trees around her which bear love letters and with a medlar "I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i' th' country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar." (III.ii.116-119).

In Cervantes's Don Quixote the eponymous hero and Sancho Panza "Stretch themselves out in the middle of a field and stuff themselves with acorns or medlars."

In the 16th and 17th centuries, medlars were also bawdily called "open-arses" because of the shape of the fruits, inspiring the presence of boisterously or humorously indecent puns in many Elizabethan and Jacobean plays.

The most famous reference to medlars, often bowdlerized until modern editions accepted it, appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio laughs at Romeo's unrequited love for his mistress Rosaline (II, 1, 34-38):

Now will he sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a pop'rin pear!

Thomas Dekker also draws a saucy comparison in his play The Honest Whore: "I scarce know her, for the beauty of her cheek hath, like the moon, suffered strange eclipses since I beheld it: women are like medlars._no sooner ripe but rotten"

Another reference can be found in Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One in the character of Widow Medler, impersonated by a courtesan, hence the following pun: "Who? Widow Medler? She lies open to much rumour." (II, 2, 59).

In modern literature, some writers have also mentioned this fruit:

Saki uses medlars in his short stories, which often play on the decay of Edwardian society. In "The Peace of Mowsle Barton", the outwardly quiet farmstead features a medlar tree and corrosive hatred. In "The Boar Pig", the titular animal, Tarquin Superbus, is the point of contact between society ladies cheating to get into the garden party of the season and a not entirely honest young schoolgirl who lures him away by strategically throwing well-bletted medlars: "Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can't resist medlars when they're rotten and squashy."

D. H. Lawrence: "Wineskins of brown morbidity, autumnal excrementa ... an exquisite odour of leave taking".

Vladimir Nabokov in Ada or Ardor briefly mentions a poet named Max Mispel, "another botanical name".

Availability

Variegated Common Medlar

Medlars are not widely available at present, though one can purchase the fruit and trees from specialists.

In the UK, the fruit are available seasonally at Borough Market, from Booth's (The Wild Mushroom Store) and Chegworth valley.

The jelly is available year-round from Classic Preserves of Brogdale Agricultural Trust and from Tiptree.

Trees

The trees are self-fertilizing and long-lived (they can be hundreds of years old), and saplings are cheaply available by mail order in the UK.

In the US, trees and seeds are available as discussed in this article: Plant of the Week: Medlar

See also

• Durian, a fruit known for smelling rotten when ripe
• Loquat, also known as the "Japanese medlar"

External links

• Medlars On Bough photograph
• Medlar Fruit & Jelly, photographs and discussions of medlar preparation
• Medlar Jelly at Tiptree, photo of medlar jelly at vendor in the United Kingdom
• Medlars at Raintree, photo and description at vendor of medlar seedlings in the United States
• Medlar Cheese, a recipe for medlar cheese at historicfood.com
• Blue Oak Ranch, Medlar grower in Kern County, CA.
• One Green World a provider of medlar trees in Oregon

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mespilus

Notes