Can a humble fruit tree cause the decline of something as mighty a the Roman Empire? Probably not, but the Medlar was a very important fruit for a bunch of Italians so far from their cosy Mediterranean homeland. They brought the medlar to our shores, an unusual fruit in that you can eat it in the dead of winter after it has bletted.
Bleeting is a state of being past ripening, think of the Icelandic Rotting Shark delicacy, looks vile, tastes ok though, and makes an excellent jelly which goes really well with cheese & wine.
If grown in a warmer climate it is an early fruiting tree (March/April) the fruits taste like a tart apricot. In my Grandmothers garden in Cyprus the trees grow to their full height (20 ft). My Medlar, grown from a seed from my Grandmother’s garden, is 12 years old and has attained the height 5ft, it has not yet fruited however. Regarding hardiness I find the information on the internet most unsatisfactory, and largely incorrect. Whilst the Medlar certainly prefers a warm and sunny climate, which would indicate a hardiness zone rating of 10, a winter low of −1.1 °C (30 °F), it has survived in my garden through 2 vile winters in 2008/9 & 2009/10 where my garden twice dropped to −20 °C (−5 °F) indicating that the Medlar can sustain limited periods in a hardiness zone rating of 6, so quite a tough little tree considering it evolved in Asia Minor.
So a useful tree as well as attractive, the glossy thick leaves appear to be largely pest resistant, on a hot summers day they help me to make believe I am back in Cyprus, only without the coach roaches.
The fruits are an interesting shape, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries medlars were often referred to as “open-arsed” because of the shape of the fruits, which lead to many references in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, my favourite of which appears in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where the character Mercutio ribs Romeo for his fawning over Rosaline:
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
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, thou a pop’rin pear.
I must have had a censored copy as I do not recall this lewdness from my schooldays… The best example I have seen of a Medlar in the UK happens to be at Antony – a National Trust garden in Cornwall.
Most famous as the setting for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, in addition to an amazing topiary, tucked away by the kitchen entrance to the house is a huge 15ft Medlar, it has obviously benefitted from the shelter and the additional warmth of being placed next to such a large house, also Cornwall is a strange place, and has many odd pockets of sub-tropical loveliness.