"judith.lea" wrote in message
...
On Dec 3, 11:20 pm, Sacha wrote:
On 3/12/07 17:00, in article ,

"Mike...." wrote:
Following up to (Nick Maclaren) wrote:

"Some sort of japonica", in normal usage, can mean only one of the
Chaenomeles. Japonica as the name of a group of plants means that
and nothing else.

are there not various "japanese" quinces? I understood the meaning to
be that. I had an ormamental one in the garden for a time.

Japanese quinces are usually understood to be Chaenomeles and then there
are
named varieties of that. AFAIK, you can make jelly from them.
Cydonia is the true quince with the large, golden, roughly pear-shaped
fruit
- these are real beauties when mature trees but they're not the
'mysterious
fruit' I'm trying to ID.
--
Sachahttp://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

I have some quince in my back garden and I don't have the faintest if
they are edible or not, my husband laughed when I bought quince at the
local greengrocers to make quince jelly for Christmas, he swears we
have the same thing in the garden, but I am not chancing it - with my
slight knowledge - I am bound to get them confused.

If the quinces are pear-shaped, they are good for jelly and other preserves.
The flowers are white with a pink tinge, and the tree is definitely a tree
(I mean, with a trunk).

If the quinces are apple-shaped, they can be used for jelly, but the result
is less rosy in colour and the taste less pronounced; personally I don't
think it's worth the considerable trouble of making. The flowers of kinds
known to me can be anything from dark red to pure white, and the plant is
more like a bush than a tree. But perhaps there are other varieties of
apple-shaped quinces that are better for cooking than the ones I've tried.

Alan Jones