Mespilus germanica
Origin: Michigan
Improvement status: Cultivar
Seeds per packet: ~10
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
Medlar is one of those odd fruits that was once quite popular but today is grown mainly as a curiosity. Yet it produces fruit that are quite delicious and unique. It's also a beautiful and ornamental tree. Medlars are hawthorn-like trees in the rose family, native to the Black Sea region. Despite their Latin name, they were not known in Germany until their introduction by the Romans. The weird-looking fruit are quirky in that they are basically inedible when fresh until they have been "bletted" (basically brought to the cusp of rotting), at which point they have a taste and texture similar to applesauce mixed with apple butter, even with a natural hint of cinnamon. This stage is sometimes described as "incipient decay." Some persimmons must be similarly bletted to be palateable, along with quince, rowan, and dates.
Horticulturalist F.A. Bush wrote in Trees and Shrubs in 1947 that "if the fruit is wanted it should be left on the tree until late October and stored until it appears in the first stages of decay; then it is ready for eating. More often the fruit is used for making jelly." A Wikipedia contributor notes that fruit should be harvested from the tree immediately following a hard frost, starting the bletting process by breaking down cell walls." In his 1920 book Notes on a Cellar-Book, the English wine legend George Saintsbury called bletted medlars the "ideal fruit to accompany wine."
The 'Walters' variety that is the source for these seeds was developed by Ken Asmus of Oikos Tree Crops in Michigan. He explains its background and usefulnesss:
"['Walters'] was collected from a mentor nursery person, Cliff Walters, whom I met when I graduated from college in the late 70s. His nursery, Dutch Mountain Nursery, specialized in fruits for birds. He invited me into his house for lunch one day and inspired me to start my nursery and ship plants around the country. After he passed away, his family allowed me to collect a few medlar fruits from a plant he had. I germinated his seeds and planted the trees on a windswept hilltop with sandy dune-type soil. They grew vigorously in the low organic soil and began producing fruit when they reached six feet tall. Slow growing at first, the plants made up for it in the third year from seed and then began producing side branches. The foliage and fruit is always clean and the yields are high. Initially I lost a few to fireblight, but eventually the others showed complete immunity. The 'Walters' tree was by far the best medlar I have grown so far and it can be grown from seed. It easily has double the yields of the large grafted selections.
The medlar is the ultimate sauce plant perfect for combining with other sweeter fruits like apple or pear. You can put them in a pot, add a little water and stew them and then strain out the seeds after it is cooked thoroughly."
GROWING NOTES: Medlars are not for the impatient. It can take two years just to sprout the seeds.
Here's what Ken says about germinating them and why it takes so long: "Add a moist soil media around the seeds, like slightly damp Canadian peat moss. Medlar seeds are doubly dormant requiring two years to germinate. The seeds require warm, cold, warm and then cold again. The seeds have a very hard seed coat and along with the immature embryo the seed continues to grow and develop until the bony shell is weakened by soil bacteria and then it splits releasing the embryo and the root emerges. One way to overcome dormancy is to put in a propagation tray outside and cover the seeds with 1/4 inch of sand. Screen the tray to prevent pilferage [from rodents or birds]. Most seeds will sprout within the second year and can be treated like apple seeds with a two year dormancy but sometimes a small portion of the seeds sprout in the third year.
Sheffield's Seed suggests this protocol: Seeds should first be cold stratified for a full year, then warm stratified for 8 to 9 months, then cold stratified for another 120 days. They require light for germination, so should be planted at or just below the surface of your growing medium. They may start sprouting during that final cold stratification. Once established, trees can be treated similarly to apple or pear trees.
