Medlar
Mespilus germanica
Not a fruit to eat off the branch — picked after frost, then left to blet indoors for weeks.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange
- Sunlight
- Full sun through to partial shade, with shelter if it can be had.
- Watering
- Water it while young; once established it shrugs off drought.
- Feeding
- A compost mulch in spring; it rarely asks for more.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- A light winter prune, taking out dead or crossing branches.
- Mar–May Bud Break
- May–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Nov Fruit Set
- Nov–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 14 ft 9 in
- In-row spacing
- 14 ft 9 in
- Between rows
- 18 ft 1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow and far-reaching
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 26–39 ft across, about 2–3× the width of the plant
Almost all of a tree’s roots are in the top two feet of soil, where the air is, and they run out well past the branch tips. The deep taproot most people picture belongs to the seedling; the tree grows out of it and spends the rest of its life spreading sideways instead.
The habit is Medlar’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Comfrey, Wildflowers, Clover
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com