From “First Flowers” in Making a Garden by Rita Buchanan:
“Fresh flowers are the most remarkable feature in a winter garden. Their petals seem so tender and delicate, their colors so rich and intense, and their sweet scents so unexpected and delightful.
“But plants that are called winter flowers in most gardening books may not bloom in your garden until spring, since bloom time depends on climate. The colder your winter, the longer you have to wait. Flowering quince blooms in January in Texas, February in Georgia, March in Maryland, April in New Jersey, and not until May in Vermont….
“Another of the earliest shrubs is flowering quince (Chaenomeles hybrids, sometimes listed under C. speciosa). There are many cultivars, with flowers like apple blossoms in shades of pink, scarlet, orange, and white. ‘Texas Scarlet‘ is watermelon-red ‘Cameo‘ has double flowers in apricot-pink. ‘Snow’ and ‘Jet Trail‘ are white. ‘Toyo Nishiki‘ has red, pink, and white flowers all at the same time….
“The flowers last for several weeks, especially if the weather stays cool, and may still be there when the leaves come out. Flowering quinces are tough, adaptable shrubs with upright, rounded, or spreading shapes. They can be left unpruned, sheared for hedges, trained up a wall, or sculpted into bonsai-type specimens. The crooked, sometimes thorny twigs are popular with flower arrangers, who cut stems early and force them into bloom indoors.”
From “Flowering Quince” in Collected Poems: 1937-1962 by Winfield Townley Scott:
If right in front of me,
Slow motion — fast motion really —
The cold branch of the quince
Should all at once
Start with a rash of buds
Then the thin green nudge
The brown back, then the color
Of the waxen flower, the flame,
Open everywhere the same
Golden-centered swirl
Of odor, sweet burning odor —
Performed in one day, one hour
Or even one minute
Which would then hold in it,
For more than sense or praise
Could say, all April’s days —
That would set my heart awhirl….
Hello!
In this post, we have photographs of one of my favorite plants to capture by camera at Oakland Cemetery, one whose blooming cycles span several seasons every year. While the quotation at the top of this post states that Japanese Quince (Chaenomeles speciosa) blooms in Georgia in February, I’ve seen this plant blooming as early as January and continue producing new flowers through late spring and even early summer. I took these photographs on March 4 and March 29, and on both dates, it displayed plenty of unopened buds waiting for their chance in the sun. It’s near the entrance to the cemetery’s gardens, where it tumbles over an old stone wall, spanning a distance of about 25 feet and shooting branches as much as five feet into the air. Its exuberant growth is matched by its volume of flowers and its resilience: in addition to its early spring and early summer blooming, I’ve caught it producing late fall, slightly smaller flowers in November and December.
There are a lot of photos in this post — possibly more than I typically share at one time — but I’m working towards wrapping up May with this and one more post before filling this site with over 300 photos I took of irises (we hope you like irises!) in April. Those iris photos are getting some last-minute retouching but will be ready for the first week of June.
Having observed this same Japanese Quince over several years, I paid extra attention to its structure and growth patterns on purpose, rather than solely focusing on its (very nice white) flowers only. Here are some of the visual characteristics of a Japanese Quince like this that I tried to intentionally capture in these photos, many of which are also reflected in the poem “Flowering Quince” above:
- On each of the two days I photographed the plant, there were many clusters of closely spaced flowers (like in the first seven images) and many examples of one or two blossoms along the length of a stem. The clusters tend to appear toward the ends of branches, where they get the most sunlight and are positioned to grab the attention of pollinators. The yellow filaments at the flowers’ centers are pushed out from the base of each blossom, enabling those pollinators to scatter the pollen as they alight on the flowers.
- Mature leaves on this plant are a rich, dark green, often edged with red. Scroll down a bit and you can see how the leaves look early in their lifecycle: they appear red to the eyes, but to Lightroom they’re mostly orange throughout the body of the leaf, yet still with red edging. Like I described for the leaves of Lady Banks’ Rose earlier (see Lady Banks’ Rose, Spring 2025 (2 of 2) / Notes on Visualizing Botany), the red serves multiple purposes: it helps protect the new leaves from damage as they grow in; it helps attract pollinators (who will notice the contrast between red edges and the green of the leaves or the background); and it gives photographers something more to look at. In some of the photographs, you’ll see what look like bright red or orange dots along the stems: these are the newest of new leaves that likely busted out a day or two after the photographer stopped looking.
- The branches of this plant are more photogenic than they appear at first glance. In addition to contrasting nicely with the leaves and flowers, they actually contain a lot of color — ranging through shades of reddish-brown through purple. I typically add a little saturation to branches that have colors in this range, since our “eye reaction” may simply register them as brown, but the purple is there, and it shows up nicely with a little boost from Lightroom while still representing the plant’s natural colors. Their protective thorns contain similar though less apparent colors, and they’re stiff and quite sharp — ask me how I know!
- You can see hints at the complexity of the plant’s overall structure in the backgrounds of some of the photos, where there are softened representations of its crisscrossing stems. That structure — along with the stiffness of the branches and the thorns — helps protect the plant from intruders. No beast nor human would attempt to walk into it — once again, ask me how I know!
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
Gorgeous
Thank you!