"Chookie" wrote in message
news:ehrebeniuk-5974A7.14181816092007@news...
In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

tbh we're not 100% sure they are quinces - there was no fruit last year,
so
i'm guessing :-) they look like quinces, though.

however, there are several, & they have water shoots at their bases, &
even
worse, clumps of suckers coming up out of the ground.

Depends what you mean by "quinces"!

The edible quince is Cydonia oblonga, and if left unpruned looks like a
shrubby kind of tree, like this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im..._oblonga_1.jpg
I prune mine, so it has an open vase shape. While I have seen it shoot
from
low down on the trunk, I haven't seen it sucker.

OTOH the Flowering quince is Chaenomeles japonica. It is a bush with a
suckering habit -- that is, it shoots from the base. Over time, they can
become quite large thickets. Here is a small one:
http://www.unperformedgarden.com/Arb...haenomeles.htm
And a big group:
http://www.huntingtonbotanical.org/W.../Image124.html

Just to make it more confusing, you can eat the fruit of the flowering
quince
(or "japonica", as it's sometimes called). It makes a nice jelly.

So if yours are Japonicas, they are behaving naturally :-)

why thank you ;-)

in fact, since they are smallish, fruity-looking trees, my guess is they're
either real quinces or something else entirely!

(having said that, tree i.d. is Not My Thing ;-)
thanks for the info!
kylie