Common-Medlar flowers

Medlar fruit, cv. 'Nefle Precoce'

Mespilus, commonly called Medlar, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Rosaceae. One, Mespilus germanica, is a long-known native of southwest Asia and possibly also southeastern Europe, and the other, Mespilus canescens, was discovered in North America in 1990.

Mespilus germanica features an unusual apple-like fruit that requires bletting to eat; although not widely eaten today, consumption of these fruits was much more common in the past.

Plant

Mespilus are deciduous large shrubs to small trees growing up to 8 metres (26 ft) tall. The leaves are dark green and elliptic, 6–15 centimetres (2.4–5.9 in) long and 3–4 centimetres (1.2–1.6 in) wide. The leaves turn red in autumn before falling. The five-petaled white flowers, produced in late spring, are hermaphrodite and pollinated by bees. The fruit is a pome, 2–3 centimetres (0.79–1.2 in) 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

Mespilus germanica is apparently native only to Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe, i.e. near the Black Sea coast and western Mediterranean, and Asia Minor, as well as the Caucasus and Northern Iran, but it has an ancient history of cultivation and wild plants exist in a much wider area; it was grown by the ancient Greeks and Romans, beginning in the 2nd century BCE. Mespilus germanica was a very popular fruit in Western Europe during the Victorian era;^{[citation needed]} but has fallen out of favour there.

Related plants

Within subfamily Amygdaloideae, Mespilus is most closely related to Crataegus, Amelanchier, Peraphyllum, and Malacomeles.^[2]

The genus Eriobotrya was once considered to be closely related to Mespilus. The loquat, one of several Eriobotrya species, was formerly thought to be closely related to the genus Mespilus, and is still sometimes known in some European countries as a medlar and is still sometimes called the "Japanese Medlar".

Many authors group Mespilus together with Crataegus in a single genus, with species names Crataegus germanica (L.) Kuntze, and Crataegus ×canescens (J. B. Phipps) T. A. Dickinson & E. Y. Y. Lo.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Availability

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

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.