Plant · P-377

Flowering Quince

Chaenomeles speciosa

Flowering quince is grown as much for its fence line as for its fruit: dense, thorny stems build into a stock-proof hedge once the thicket closes, doubling as a shrub layer in a food forest. The fruit, up to 6.5 cm across, is too harsh and acid to eat raw but turns fragrant once cooked into jam, jelly or a flavoring for cooked apple, and carries a real dose of vitamin C. It flowers very early on bare wood, before most other bloom, so pruning has to wait until after flowering or the next season's bloom is cut away. It needs acid to neutral soil to stay healthy - on strongly alkaline ground it turns chlorotic, with yellowed foliage and branch dieback rather than just poor color.