Japanese flowering quince
Chaenomeles japonica
A low, spreading, spiny shrub of gardens and old hedges, flowering on bare or barely leafy wood in early spring with cupped flowers in brick-red to orange-scarlet. The fruits that follow are hard, knobbly, greenish-yellow pomes, far too sour and astringent to eat raw, but strongly aromatic and very high in pectin, which makes them a good jelly, cordial or set fruit paste.
Not native. Planted from Japan into borders, low clipped hedges and municipal beds throughout Britain and Ireland, and persisting long after the garden has gone — on old house sites, allotment edges, cemetery boundaries and railway banks. Tolerant of most soils and of hard pruning.
A cooking fruit only: raw, the flesh is intensely astringent and hard enough to risk a tooth. As with apple and true quince pips, the seeds contain cyanogenic compounds, so strain them out rather than blending them into a purée. The shoots carry short stiff spines, and shrubs in parks, verges and clipped hedges may have been sprayed or treated.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Habit
A dense, twiggy shrub rarely above a metre, usually wider than it is tall, often clipped into a low hedge or spilling over a wall. Nothing about it reads as a tree, which separates it at a distance from true quince and from pear.
Flowers
Cupped, five-petalled flowers 2.5–4cm across in brick-red to orange-scarlet, sitting in small clusters directly on the older wood from February to April, mostly before the leaves. Pink and white forms are grown, so colour alone is not diagnostic.
Fruit
A rounded to slightly pear-shaped pome 3–5cm across, greenish-yellow ripening to yellow, often lumpy or ribbed and sometimes russeted. The skin is smooth or very faintly downy, never woolly, and the flesh is gritty, pale and rock-hard.
Leaves
Small oval leaves 3–5cm long, glossy dark green above with bluntly rounded teeth, carried on a short stalk with a pair of conspicuous rounded, leaf-like stipules at the base. Duller, larger, felted leaves point to true quince instead.
Spines
Short, stiff spines on the shoots, easily felt when reaching into the bush. Useful confirmation up close: a spineless shrub or tree with quince-like fruit is not this species.
Updated 2026-08-08T12:03:04.660Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Fruit