Quince can mean two different plants in a garden. Quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a small tree with large, yellow, pear-shaped fruit. Flowering quince (Chaenomeles), also sold as Japanese quince, is a low and thorny shrub with small, hard fruit. If your quince flowers orange-red as early as April, it is almost certainly a flowering quince, since the fruiting tree is uncommon this far north.
How to tell quince from flowering quince
The quickest test is the thorns. Run your hand along a branch: if it catches, it is a flowering quince. The second quickest is the flowering time. Flowering quince blooms in April and May on bare wood, while quince flowers only once the tree is in leaf.
| Quince (Cydonia oblonga) | Flowering quince (Chaenomeles) | |
|---|---|---|
| Habit and height | Small tree, 3-4.5 m tall and about as wide, up to 6 m in warm climates | Shrub, usually 1-3 m. Low hybrid cultivars stay at 80-100 cm |
| Thorns | None | Thorny branches, dense and tangled right down to the ground |
| Flowering | Late in spring, after the leaves open. White or pale pink flowers | April to May, before the leaves. Usually clear orange-red, also white and pink |
| Flower size | Single large flowers at the shoot tips | 3-4.5 cm across, carried in clusters along the branches |
| Fruit | Pear-shaped, yellow, often with a downy skin. Single fruits can weigh close to 1 kg | Apple-shaped, 4-7 cm across, green when unripe and clear yellow at maturity |
| Pollination | Self-fertile, one tree is enough | Two shrubs of different cultivars give more reliable fruit set |
| Hardiness | Needs a warm, sheltered site and a long, warm summer | Hardy, takes cold and exposed positions |
| Use | Marmalade, jelly and a scented fruit indoors | Jelly, cordial, thorny hedge and an early nectar source |
Why the fruit cannot be eaten raw
Both fruits are hard, astringent and sour when picked. Flowering quince tastes much like an unripe apple, with an acidity close to that of lemon. Quince has a milder acidity but is so hard that it takes effort even to cut into.
Cooked, they become something else. Both contain a lot of pectin, and flowering quince holds more pectin than either apple or quince. The jelly therefore sets without preserving sugar or pectin powder. Cut the fruit into pieces of a couple of centimetres, leave the core in since it adds pectin, simmer until the pieces fall apart and strain the juice through a cloth.
Cook quince for a long time together with sugar and the flesh turns from pale yellow to red. The colour comes from anthocyanins that develop under long heating and never appear with quick cooking.
Hardiness and site
Flowering quince is the hardier of the two. The hybrid Chaenomeles x superba 'Crimson and Gold' reaches 80-100 cm in height and about as much across, and flowers orange-red with yellow stamens in April and May. It flowers and sets fruit in positions that are too cold for many fruit trees.
Quince is the more demanding. The tree needs a warm, sunny and wind-sheltered site, and in cooler districts a south or south-west facing wall decides whether the crop ripens. It is the same reasoning as when you grow peaches: the wall heat weighs more than the quality of the soil. Flowering comes late, only after the leaves open, so spring frost is rarely the problem. Summer heat is.
Planting flowering quince
Light: full sun with at least six hours of direct light gives the most flowers. The shrub survives in part shade but flowers sparsely.
Soil: tolerates clay, silt, sand and shallow stony ground with acid to neutral pH. Drainage matters more than fertility.
Spacing: 100 cm between plants for the low hybrid cultivars. Large forms of Chaenomeles speciosa can reach 2-3.5 m tall and nearly as wide, and need more room.
Protection for your hands: the branches are thorny all the way in towards the centre, so a pair of garden gloves makes both planting and picking easier.
Planting quince
Quince is self-fertile, so a single tree gives a crop. Fruit set is better, though, if there is a second tree nearby to cross-pollinate with.
The tree wants deep, fertile and moisture-retentive soil and does badly on dry, limy ground. The root system sits shallow, which makes the tree sensitive to drought and to spade work near the trunk. Lay a 5-8 cm layer of compost or grass clippings around the tree instead.
For a small garden there are dwarfing rootstocks. Quince C and Quince Eline keep the size down, while Quince A gives a medium-sized tree. Cultivars to ask for at the nursery are 'Vranja', which ripens early, 'Meech's Prolific', which crops heavily, and 'Serbian Gold', which is compact and resistant to leaf blight. If you want a fruit tree that is safer in a colder and more exposed garden, bullace plum is an easier choice.
Pruning that does not remove the flowering
The commonest reason a flowering quince stops flowering is that it was pruned at the wrong time. The flower buds are laid down in late summer and autumn, on the current year's shoots and on older spurs. Cut in spring and you take away exactly the buds that would have flowered. Prune instead straight after flowering in May or June, so the shrub has time to build new buds for the following spring.
Quince is pruned sparingly and in winter. Shape the tree into an open crown over the first three to four years, then take out only dead, damaged and crossing wood and thin where the crown gets congested. Quince bears its fruit at the shoot tips, so never shorten the one-year shoots. Do that and you cut away next year's fruit. Thinning rather than shortening is the same principle as when you prune apple trees, with the difference that quince always bears at the tip. Clean cuts heal fastest, so use secateurs that slice through the branch instead of crushing it.
Harvest and ripening indoors
Flowering quince is picked when the fruits turn from green to clear yellow, in September and October. Chaenomeles japonica is the species that ripens earliest and can be ready by the end of August in a northern climate.
Quince is picked in October or November, once the skin has gone from pale yellow to golden yellow and the fruit smells strongly. Pick before the first frost. This far north the fruit does not finish ripening on the tree, and the rest happens indoors.
Pick only undamaged fruit: a knock leaves a brown patch that spreads during storage.
Lay them out with space: use trays or boxes where the fruits do not touch each other, and do not wrap them in paper.
Cool and dark: do not store them together with apples and pears, since the quince scent carries over into other fruit.
Wait 6-8 weeks: the flesh softens, the astringency fades and the scent grows clearer.
Use within two to three months: that is how long well stored fruit keeps.
The scent is strong enough to fill a room. A few fruits in a bowl on the kitchen table last for weeks and are in themselves a reason to grow the tree.
Flowering quince as a hedge and an early nectar source
Flowering quince is dense and thorny right down to the ground and therefore works both as a hedge and as a physical barrier. Planted 100 cm apart the row closes up within a few years. It needs no clipping to grow dense, and a free-growing row flowers more freely than a clipped one.
The flowers open in April and May, long before the summer flowers. They have no scent but are rich in nectar and are visited by honeybees and bumblebees. For a queen bumblebee that has just woken, a flowering quince in bloom is one of few meals to be had. If you want to build on that idea in the border, you will find more species among our seeds for pollinators.
Author: Emma Vogiatzi
Fact-checked by Erik Hoekstra
Last updated 2026-09-03