Quince

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{{Taxobox | color = lightgreen | name = Quince | image = Quince flowers.jpg | image_width = 240px | image_caption = Cydonia oblonga flowers | regnum = Plantae | divisio = Magnoliophyta | classis = Magnoliopsida | ordo = Rosales | familia = Rosaceae | subfamilia = Maloideae | genus = Cydonia | species = C. oblonga | binomial = Cydonia oblonga | binomial_authority = Mill. }}

The Quince Cydonia oblonga is the sole member of the genus Cydonia and native to warm-temperate southwest Asia in the Caucasus region. It is a small deciduous tree, growing 5-8 m tall and 4-6 m wide, related to apples and pears, and like them has a pome fruit, which is bright golden yellow when mature, pear-shaped, 7-12 cm long and 6-9 cm broad.

The immature fruit are green, with dense grey-white pubescence which mostly (but not all) rubs off before maturity in late autumn when the fruit changes colour to yellow with hard flesh that is strongly perfumed. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, 6-11 cm long, with an entire margin and densely pubescent with fine white hairs. The flowers, produced in spring after the leaves, are white or pink, 5 cm across, with five petals.

Quince is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Brown-tail, Bucculatrix bechsteinella, Bucculatrix pomifoliella, Coleophora cerasivorella, Coleophora malivorella, Green Pug and Winter Moth.

Four other species previously included in the genus Cydonia are now treated in separate genera. These are the Chinese Quince Pseudocydonia sinensis, a native of China, and the three flowering quinces of eastern Asia in the genus Chaenomeles. Another unrelated fruit, the Bael, is sometimes called the "Bengal Quince".

1 Origins
2 Cultivation and uses
3 Literary associations
4 External links

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Origins

Image:Koeh-049.jpg The modern name derives from the 14th century plural of quoyn, via Old French cooin from Latin cotoneum malum / cydonium malum, ultimately from Greek kydonion malon "Kydonian apple (in the loosest sense, similar to pomodoro, pomme de terre, and the classical "golden apple"). The plant is native to Persia, Anatolia, and Greece, but the Greeks grafted from a superior straing from ancient Kydonia, now Khania, a port in Crete, whence both the common and better-preserved genus name. The Lydian name for the fruit was kodu.

Cultivation of quince may have preceded apple culture, and many references translated to "apple", such as the fruit in Song of Solomon of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, may actually have been to a quince. Among the ancient Greeks, the quince was a ritual offering at weddings, for it had come from the Levant with Aphrodite and remained sacred to her. Plutarch reports that a Greek bride would nibble a quince to perfume her kiss before entering the bridal chamber, "in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant" (Roman Questions 3.65). It was a quince that Paris awarded Aphrodite. It was for a golden quince that Atalanta paused in her race. The Romans also used quinces; the Roman cookbook of Apicius gives recipes for stewing quince with honey, and even combining them, unexpectedly for us, with leeks. Pliny the Elder mentioned the one variety, Mulvian quince, that could be eaten raw. Columella mentioned three, one of which, the "golden apple" that may have been the paradisal fruit in the Garden of the Hesperides, has donated its name in Italian to the tomato, pomodoro.

Image:Quince.jpg

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Cultivation and uses

Image:Cydonia.jpg Quince is frost hardy and requires a cold period below 7 °C to flower properly. The tree is self fertile however yield can benefit from cross fertilisation. The fruit can be left on the tree to ripen further which softens the fruit to the point where it can be eaten raw in warmer climates, but should be picked before the first frosts.

Quinces are too hard, astringent and sour to eat raw unless 'bletted' (softened by frost). They are used to make jam, jelly and quince pudding, or they may be peeled, then roasted. The seeds are poisonous and should not be consumed. The very strong perfume means they can be added in small quantities to apple pies and jam to enhance the flavour. The term "marmalade", originally meaning a quince jam, derives from the Portuguese word for this fruit marmelo. The fruit, like so many others, can be used to make a type of wine. In Spain, the quince or "membrillo" as it is called, is cooked into a paste-like jelly and is eaten with cheese. Quince juice from organic farming is available in Germany and its pleasant taste mixes well with other fruit juices.

Elsewhere in Europe, quinces are commonly grown in central and southern areas where the summers are sufficiently hot for the fruit to fully ripen. They are not grown in large amounts; typically one or two quince trees are grown in a mixed orchard with several apples and other fruit trees. Charlemagne directed that quinces be planted in well-stocked orchards. Quinces are mentioned for the first time in an English text in the later 13th century, though cultivation in England is not very successful due to inadequate summer heat to ripen the fruit fully. They were also introduced to the New World, but have become rare in North America due to their susceptibility to fireblight disease caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora. They are still widely grown in Argentina and Uruguay. Almost all of the quinces in North American specialty markets come from Argentina.

The quince, used as a rootstock for grafted plants, has the property of stunting the growth of pears, of forcing them to produce relatively more fruit-bearing branches, instead of vegetative growth, and of accelerating the maturity of the fruit.

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Literary associations

The film "El sol del membrillo" (Quince Tree of the Sun; The Dream of Light) directed by Víctor Erice in 1992 is a documentary about a painter, Antonio López García, who spends September through December painting a quince tree in his garden.

In a Simpsons episode, "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1", Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers end up eating an entire box of chocolates in one sitting, leaving behind and discarding only one piece: the sour quince log.

In Edward Lear's famous poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" the protagonists "dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon".

In the movie White Men Can't Jump, Rosie Perez's character Gloria Clemente was on Jeopardy and it was the response to "Adam and Eve dined on this forbidden fruit".

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