Unlike the common quince, the Japanese quince shrub is much smaller in size and is most often grown for decorative purposes. However, those gardeners who managed to achieve the fruiting of the Japanese quince have a great opportunity to treat themselves to delicious jam or fragrant tea with this tart fruit, reminiscent of small apples or pears in shape.
Description of Japanese quince henomeles Mauleya
Ornamental shrub Japanese quince, or Japanese chaenomeles, belongs to the Rosaceae family.
Homeland – Japan and China. 4 species are known. In ornamental gardening, one is usually used – Mauleya chaenomeles, or low quince.
You can find a photo and description of the decorative quince of this species below:
This is a low-growing shrub up to 1 m high, with arched brown-gray prickly branches. Young shoots are green with silvery pubescence. The leaves are ovate, dark green above, shiny, lighter below, pubescent. The plant is especially beautiful in spring during the period of abundant and long (more than a month) flowering.
The flowers are large, solitary or grouped, orange-red or pinkish-white with a delicate pleasant smell, located almost along the entire length of the shoot.
On one shoot there are up to 50 flowers. Blooms in mid-May, is a good honey plant. Fruiting is annual, one bush gives 25-30 fruits that ripen in September. Fruits in the form of apples or pears, ribbed, lemon or golden yellow, up to 5 cm in diameter, fragrant.
People call them garden lemons for their sour taste, peculiar pleasant aroma and a large amount of vitamins. The fruits are cut into slices and put in tea. They cook jam, compotes, make marmalade, prepare tinctures, fruit drinks and kvass. In folk medicine, it is used for beriberi and stomach diseases.
Growing Japanese quince: planting and care
When planting and caring for Japanese quince, do not forget that this shrub prefers open sunny or slightly shaded areas, protected from the wind, with fairly fertile and moist soil. Tolerates short drought, winter-hardy.
Quince propagates by sowing seeds in spring or autumn, as well as by green cuttings, layering, and grafting. The main method of reproduction is seed. Sowing is carried out in autumn or spring after preliminary stratification for 2-3 months.
A year later, the seedlings are planted in a permanent place. Fruiting usually occurs in the third year. To enhance the decorative effect, Japanese quince can be grafted on a trunk 1–1.5 m high.
Common fushu is used as a rootstock. When growing Japanese quince in the spring before flowering, bushes are pruned – weak, broken, frost-damaged, as well as old branches aged 5 years or more are removed, taking into account the fact that maximum flowering is observed on three-year-old shoots.
Look at the photo of planting and caring for decorative quince in the middle lane:
Quince is widely used in the design of flower beds (rockeries, rock gardens), decorative walls, arbors and terraces . It is also good in single landings on lawns, in complex mixborders between low perennials. Can be used in low hedges.