Sweet After the Freeze: Remembering Growing, and Eating the Medlar

From my grandfather’s orchard in Europe to the Pacific Northwest, the medlar endures—sweetening only after frost.

My grandfather, Georg Wolf, planted medlars in the old country long before I was born. By then the tree had already slipped from favor—a fruit from another age, too slow, too strange, too patient for modern taste. Yet for him, as for the small-farmers and monks before him, the medlar was a kind of winter mercy: calories and sweetness arriving when the world had gone gray.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, that patience still pays off. While neighbors, hopefully, wrap figs and drain irrigation lines, the medlar is just beginning its slow perfection. Its fruit hangs through the cold—hard, russet, and defiant—until the frosts work their quiet chemistry. Then, on a bright November or December morning, you walk out into a bare orchard and see them still clinging to the branches: brown, softening, and sweet as memory.

Early autumn medlar fruit (Mespilus germanica) ripening on the branch, its russet skin beginning to soften before the first frost.

A Fruit of Patience, History, and Inheritance

The medlar (Mespilus germanica) was once a fixture of European cottage orchards, celebrated in medieval feasts and Renaissance still-lifes. Shakespeare mocked it as the “open-arse fruit,” Chaucer praised its flavor, and nearly every rural family kept a tree near the house. It ripened when little else did—after apples were stored and pears were gone—bridging the hunger gap between harvest and winter.

Today, it’s returning quietly to the gardens of the Pacific Northwest. I've planted many specimens around Orcas and the PNW. I’ve written about this tree for the Seattle Fruit Tree Society and other regional groups, because it belongs here. Once common in European cottage orchards and monastic gardens, the medlar (Mespilus germanica) carries a lineage that reaches back to ancient Persia and the Black Sea coast. The Greeks and Romans carried it west; monks and farmers tended it for centuries after. It’s one of those trees that has so much history, you can feel it — a living heirloom whose patience still fits our cool Northwest autumns.

Nutrition, Uses, and the Late-Ripening Gift

Medlars are small reservoirs of vitamin C, fiber, and natural pectin. When fully bletted—the stage when the flesh softens and sugars rise—they taste of baked apple, date, and spiced wine. Seriously. The fruit can be eaten with a spoon straight from the skin or turned into jellies, butters, and liqueurs. My favorite way is to pluck one from the tree, press until the pulp breaks the soft skin, and pop it into my mouth. The seeds are few and large, easy to spit out. In the pantry, the medlar holds a niche between fruit and preserve—a fresh sweetness that requires no cooking, only time.

Because they ripen so late, medlars extend the edible season deep into winter. A few trees can keep an orchard family in fresh fruit weeks after everything else has surrendered to frost.

Planting and Cultivation

A medlar is a small, handsome tree—10 to 15 feet tall, spreading with age, its crooked limbs silver-gray against winter sky. It prefers full sun, well-drained loam, and a neutral to slightly acidic soil (pH 6–7). Hardy to Zone 5, it thrives in the PNW’s cool summers and long autumns, and tolerates both drought and wet winters once established.

Grafted specimens on quince C produce compact, early-bearing trees suitable for small gardens. On seedling rootstock they grow larger and live longer, fitting into mixed-fruit guilds with apples, hawthorns, and autumn herbs.

Pests, Disease, and Care

Medlars are notably resilient. They shrug off most common fruit-tree pests and diseases, with only occasional cosmetic russeting. Fire blight can appear in unusually warm, wet years, but pruning for airflow and avoiding heavy nitrogen usually prevent it. They flower late enough to escape most spring frosts—another quiet advantage in northern gardens. They are easy to keep organic, requiring no sprays at all in most years.

Yield and Management

A mature tree bears generously, often too generously. Thin developing clusters if you want larger fruit and unbroken limbs. The wood is flexible but brittle under load; proper training early on prevents splitting. An unthinned tree can still give a hundred or more fruits, their weight bending the branches until they seem to bow to winter itself. They respond well to pruning, and aren't susceptible to transplanting root shock. Sound easy? This tree will make you look good.

An overcropped medlar tree in mid-October on Orcas Island WA, with limbs bent to their limit. Photo credit: Grace Sofie Wolf.

Harvest, Bletting, and Flavor

Harvest begins not when the fruit looks ready, but when the cold insists. Wait until the first hard frosts, then pick gently and set in a single layer, stem-down, in a cool, airy place. Over two to four weeks the flesh softens and darkens—a process called bletting. Or, you can let them blett on the tree, which means doing nothing until harvesting them in deep winter.

When perfectly bletted, the skin yields to a thumb’s pressure and the interior turns to fragrant, caramelized pulp. Scoop it out with a spoon; eat it cold; mix it with cream or port. It is the taste of stored sunlight—winter’s jam without the jar.

Frost-covered medlars clinging to bare winter branches, their flesh softening in the cold before becoming sweet and ready to eat.

Propagation

Medlars can be propagated by seed (though seedlings vary) or by grafting onto quince, hawthorn, or pear. Quince C produces the most compact, orchard-friendly tree. Layering and softwood cuttings also work, slowly. A well-sited tree can live half a century or more, ripening its fruit when almost nothing else does.

Why the PNW Needs the Medlar

In permaculture, we talk about stacking functions—beauty, resilience, yield, benefit. The medlar does it all. It feeds pollinators in spring, people in winter, and the imagination year-round. It asks only that we meet it halfway with patience.

Endurance

When I bite into a bletted medlar on a cold and muddy day, I think of my grandfather’s orchard and garden half a world away, two generations away. His winters were harder than mine, his life was harder than mine, his soil thinner, and he often planted for hunger, not for pleasure. Some fruits teach abundance; this one teaches what time and endurance can make of us.

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