howcdid your concoctions turn out @jaunders1. Those are nice looking Chaenomeles. How did you happen into them? There seems to be little info about fruit quality of various cultivars. Those look extraordinarily high quality compared to what Ive encountered. Ive always been tempted to make something like lemon curd with the few that Ive harvested and eaten.
@hobilus I actually just came across them along the side of the road growing as a neglected hedge in someoneās front yard. The bright yellow fruit all over the road really caught my eye. I ended up making a paste/jam out of them, cooked them down then pureed them. They are still very sour like a lemon but very aromatic. What I ended up doing is mixing a spoon full of the paste into some water and making a sort of lemonade. Interesting as a novelty but thereās still a bunch of it sitting unused in my fridge and freezer. I donāt know how true to seed they are but I have tons of seeds saved if you are interested. In the spring I will try to take note of the blossoms and maybe approach the owner to see if they have any information.
I have an old hot pink flower Japanese quince here.
It makes very little fruit but I really enjoy the 5-10 pieces a year candied and as a syrup.
A couple weeks ago I grafted a couple varieties on it that I got from fruitwood. Anything that said it was fruiting in the description - Toyo Nishiki and Jet Trail. They were out of tanechka cuttings but I got the last plug.
Last year I tried to graft tanechka cuttings to it but they all failed. Itās hard to tell the right timing and method. The flowers start to open just a few weeks into the start of winter. (By far the earliest to flower, beating camellia by a couple weeks.) Iām curious - if something flowers in March they usually say to graft in January or February so the graft has a month or two to heal and then it can shoot forth with spring growth. But grafting two months before early January flowering also seems wrong so I wonder what the ideal time would be
Your flowering quince is the larger species Chaenomeles speciosa which comes from China (vs. the low growing Japanese C. japonica). Itās interchangeable in terms of fruit use, but I just wanted to point it out since itās common for people to not know there are multiple species.
Thank you! @JohannsGarden
The dichotomy as itās usually presented on the internet is between flowering and fruiting quince. People also say flowering quince aka c japonica as if they are the same. So I appreciate you helping clear this up.
As a understand it, the confusion around this genus has been going on for a long time and itās not unusual to even find mislabeled specimens in botanical gardens.
Would the common name be Chinese Quince?
On a side note my house was landscaped around 1928 and there are some plants that seem to be from the original landscaping, if itās possible that they are that old. Boxwood hedges, the pink quince, camellias and even a very old seedling feijoa that was 15ā tall and wide. Two pears and several plums I had to cut down but have grafted to root suckers. Itās very satisfying to work with whatās here.
Iāve done a lot of research on the original owner who was an old lady that lived here in the ā20s and ā30s and this quince and this camellia seems like they are her touches - I like to think there are still traces of her around 80 years after her death
āChinese quinceā is used sometimes as a common name, but I tend to avoid that since there are multiple Chinese species of āquinceā type plants. Chaenomeles speciosa, Chaenomeles cathayensis and Pseudocydonia sinensis. I like just calling them āflowering quinceā since thatās what I first learned them as and then it avoids putting a country of origin on it if youāre not sure which species youāre looking at.
I agree with JohannsGarden here. The small pink thorny flowers are flowering quince. In the US, many varieties have been bred so that they donāt make fruit. I have often seen Pseudocydonia referred to as Chinese quince, and never with any other common name. I have usually seen Cydonia Oblonga referred to as ātree quinceā.
John S
PDX OR
Much thanks to @JohannsGarden for helping me identify my tree as Chinese Quince, chaenomeles speciosa. I have a couple successful grafts of both Toyo Nishiki and Jet Trail. Iām interested to see how much fruit they make compared to the regular flowering quince which is intended to be decorative
Iāve got my first flowers on āTanechkaā (a hybrid selection, so C. Ćsuperba rather than C. japonica). Given that it was aledgedly selected for fruit production, Iām very curious to see if it will set fruit well when still so young (my second year growing it). Overall, Iāve noticed it seems more upright that other selections of C. japonica, C. speciosa and their hybrids. Iāve not seen a single thorn on it either. I think the flowers are kind of a reddish-papaya color and so they really pop.