Japanese flowering quince

Family

Rosaceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

1.4 m

Spread

2 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

80 years

First yield

after 3 years

Yield per plant

up to 6 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 10 t/ha

Energy yield

600 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 5–8

Shade tolerance

full shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam, Clay

Soil moisture

dry – very moist

pH

6 – 8

Synonyms

Zierquitte, Scheinquitte

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Fruit - raw or cooked. It is very sharp and sour when raw, but fragrant when cooked, giving jams and jellies a strong pleasant taste, especially delicious when cooked with apples in apple pie. The fruit is apple-shaped and has a diameter of about 4 cm. The rich aromatic juice, as tart as a lemon, is pressed and used for culinary purposes.

Other uses: The shoots sprawl across the ground and root where they touch — hence the commonest secondary use: dense, impenetrable ground cover on banks, where Chaenomeles holds the soil and discourages access. Set about a metre apart it closes within a few years. The lower form C. japonica alpina stays roughly half the size and suits bed edging and narrow strips. Because the fruits scent strongly and pleasantly for months, they were traditionally laid in the linen chest in East Asia; they will perfume a room for weeks without spoiling. Its thorns and its indifference to urban air have made it a standard low-maintenance buffer planting in public green space.

Site: Chaenomeles tolerates shade but crops meaningfully only in sun — that is the decisive judgement before planting. It is strictly self-incompatible: without a second cultivar or a seedling within reach the shrub stays fruitless, so two different cultivars are obligatory. The shoots are thorny and sprawl across the ground; beside paths, seating and play areas that becomes a trip and scratch hazard, while as a low impenetrable hedge or underplanting beneath larger woody plants it is precisely the point. It suckers and spreads slowly outward — keep it clear of perennial beds or set an edging. On strongly calcareous soil it goes chlorotic; urban air and roadsides trouble it not at all, which also suits it to roof gardens and containers. Care: The shrub is hardy to about -25 °C and needs no winter protection. Pruning is what matters: fruit forms mainly on wood three years old and more, so routine cutting back costs the crop. Prune sparingly and straight after flowering, taking out old, exhausted stems at the base and leaving the rest. Feeding is barely needed; compost in spring is enough. Cut suckers away in spring before they travel far from the bush. The fruits ripen in October, stay rock hard and are inedible raw; harvest late, and stored cool they keep for months while scenting strongly. Birds take them only once frost has softened them.

Raising from seed is straightforward but gives no true-to-type plants: extract the pips from ripe fruit in autumn, wash them and sow at once into a seedbed or an outdoor pot. Winter cold provides the stratification and seedlings emerge in spring; seed stored dry needs eight to twelve weeks of cold in moist sand instead. Since the species is self-incompatible, seedlings are always crosses and come up variable — in commercial plantings they serve mainly as pollinators. True-to-type increase is easiest from the freely produced suckers, lifted with a root ball in spring, and from semi-ripe cuttings in summer. Layering is equally reliable, since the shoots lie on the ground anyway.

Chaenomeles flowers in March and April, long before most fruit trees break, making it one of the first dependable nectar sources of the year. NaturaDB records 30 species of wild bee on it — mining, furrow and mason bees along with bumblebees — none of them specialised. Pollen value is rated high (3 of 4) and nectar value moderate (2 of 4); for early-flying bumblebee queens it is the pollen that counts. A second value lies in structure: the low, straggling, thorny growth makes excellent bird cover in which small songbirds nest under protection. The hard fruits hang into winter and are taken only once frost has softened them. As an East Asian newcomer the species has no caterpillars tied to it in Central Europe.

Special features: forms runners; best fruit formation on 3-year-old shoots; commercially grown in Latvia on >100ha; Yield varieties are: 'Cido' !'Nivalis', 'Rasa', and various hybrids (C. x superba) 'Fusion', then best to use 2 different varieties for a secure yield; can be grafted onto pear or mountain ash rootstocks;

East Asia: Japan and the Korean Peninsula. In Japan the species grows on Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu from hill country up into the montane zone. It reached Europe in 1874 as an ornamental and has been ubiquitous in gardens and parks ever since; as an escape it turns up only sporadically on banks and woodland edges, without establishing itself as a problem neophyte. It has, surprisingly, gained commercial importance in Latvia, where it has been grown as a fruit crop in its own right on more than a hundred hectares since the 1990s and processed into juice, syrup and concentrate.

Open mountain and hill forest, woodland margins, scrub and rocky slopes in the Japanese uplands, mostly on fresh, free-draining and rather acid soils. As a low, straggling shrub of 80 to 150 centimetres the species occupies the transition between closed woodland and open ground, holding its place through suckering. It is remarkably adaptable: heavy clay, urban air pollution and deep shade are all tolerated, and only strongly alkaline soils bring on chlorosis. For fruit set, however, it needs considerably more light than its shade tolerance would suggest.