"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Tag: quince

Studying Japanese Quince

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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!

White and Red Quince on Black

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From “Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles)” in Tea: And Other Assorted Poems by Ruth Moose:

The quince rose thorny and sharp
beside our front porch steps, snagged
all who entered… my father’s temper
most. But mother’s patience
pruned. She tamed it, told it
wait. She knew its blooms,
orange neon against winter gray
saved our lives.

Each February
mother broke a branch to bring
indoors. Lifeless
sticks warmed in water
bloomed in that cheerless room.
Poverty lived in cold corners,
owned no rugs. The warmest
clothes were never quite warm
enough and bed quilts had to be high
and heavy to hold body heat.

But we lived
rich in hope.
In that barely
warm room,
each winter, Mother
created spring.

Hello!

Before saying goodbye to the quinces (at least for now), I thought it would be fun to subject a few of the photos to my black background treatment, so picked eleven of each color and did just that. Despite all the little details I had to trace around — including their tiny thorny thorns — many of them came out quite good!

All the previous quince posts for 2024 are Red Quince (1 of 2), Red Quince (2 of 2), White Quince (1 of 2), and White Quince (2 of 2).

Thanks for taking a look!

Red Quince (2 of 2)

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From “The Renaissance” in A Short History of Gardens  by Gordon Campbell:

“Italian Renaissance gardens influenced the development of garden design throughout Europe, both in layout and in content. This influence also extended to the proliferation of new species of plants, because the first botanical gardens were in Italy. The purpose of these gardens was to facilitate the study of plants for medicinal purposes. The origins of these gardens are disputed, but they may combine elements of the physic gardens of earlier centuries and the Aztec gardens that the conquistadors had discovered in Mexico….

“The Orto Botanico in Pisa (c. 1543) was planted by Luca Ghini, who taught botany and medicine at the University of Pisa. The garden was planted with medicinal plants gathered by Ghini and his students on field trips in northern Italy. The garden soon developed an international reputation both for the range of its collections and its beauty….

“It was the first garden in Europe to cultivate the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), the black walnut (Juglans nigra), the ailanthus (Ailantus glandulosa), the camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora), the Japanese quince (Chaenomeles japonica), the magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), and the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera). The garden is still owned by the university, but now specializes in lilies, water-lilies, and amaryllis.”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring red quince from Oakland Cemeteries gardens. The first post is Red Quince (1 of 2), and my white quince posts are White Quince (1 of 2) and White Quince (2 of 2).

Thanks for taking a look!

Red Quince (1 of 2)

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From “Winter Flowering Quince” by Clara Sargent Mainwaring in A Time For Poetry: An Anthology by the North Carolina Poetry Society:

How sudden-brightly primrose pink!
sun-touched outside my windowpane
sturdy on your thorny stems
glistening after winter rain,
resting robins fresh from snow,
promising that leaves will grow

From “Chaenomeles (February 4, 1962)” in Through the Garden Gate by Elizabeth Lawrence:

“I have been making a list of flowering shrubs (those that drop their leaves), one for each month of the year. The list begins with the Chinese witch hazel, and ends with wintersweet. For February I have in mind the flowering quince; though the height of its bloom is often a month later, there are other shrubs for March, and I can think of none so colorful in February.

“The cultivated quinces are forms of two species, Chaenomeles japonica, and C. lagenaria [a synonym for Chaenomeles speciosa]; and of C. x superba, a hybrid between these two. As C. japonica is dwarf, and C. lagenaria is tall there is a great variety in habit. The flowers are white, spectrum red, and tones between red and orange. They bloom between Thanksgiving and Easter….

“C. japonica is a prostrate shrub that spreads very slowly to three or four feet. I used to have it in Raleigh in the shady rock garden, where the small coral flowers appeared freely in March, with a few at almost any time of the year….

“There are any number of good red-flowering quinces in all sizes and shapes…. Many of the red ones are English hybrids.”

Hello!

On the same day I photographed freshly blooming white quince (see White Quince (1 of 2) and White Quince (2 of 2)), I also encountered several newly flowering red quince plants, who posed for the images you see below. As with white quince, these are a mix of Chaenomeles japonica and Chaenomeles speciosa — with some stretching along stone structures and walls, and others growing as compact shrubs. I waited for clouds to move in before taking these photos — something that works well with red flowers, as red in bright sunlight can be over-saturated, leading to a loss of detail.

My previous post White Quince (2 of 2) includes an excerpt from the book Japanese Gardens by Wendy B. Murphy — where the author mentions that the quince flowers appear before the plant’s leaves. That subtle characteristic is also reflected in the poem at the top of this post, where the poet observes that the flowering quince is “promising that leaves will grow.” How cool is that!

Thanks for taking a look!

White Quince (2 of 2)

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From “Chaenomeles” in Japanese Gardens by Wendy B. Murphy:

“In Japan the quince is admired for its fragrant, extremely early flowers, which may open in mid-January if weather conditions are favorable. A low-growing, wide-spreading deciduous shrub, it tolerates pruning so well that it is a classic subject for bonsai. In the garden, it is often pruned to a single stem and grown as a small tree. Alternatively, it is grown in rows as a hedge, its dense foliage and thorny branches intertwining to form an effective barrier.

“The Japanese quince grows only 3 to 4 feet tall, but it spreads 5 to 7 feet; the flowering quince grows 5 to 6 feet tall with an equal spread. Both species have shiny oval leaves, 1½ to 3 inches long, and thorns so long they sometimes appear to be small branches. The flowers, which appear before the leaves, are 1 to 2 inches wide and bloom in clusters of two to four blossoms. On the Japanese quince, they are red-orange; on the flowering quince, they may be white, pink or red, depending on the variety. Both species produce hard round green aromatic fruit in the fall, about 2 inches in diameter.”

From “The Tradescants Make Plant Hunting a Career” in The Plant Hunters by Carolyn Fry:

“By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, planting gardens was in the West becoming an indulgent hobby for wealthy gentlemen. As developing trade links brought news of the diversity of botanical riches that existed in foreign parts, the owners of large estates vied to create the most unusual and exotic collections of plants. One such gentleman was Robert Cecil, the First Earl of Salisbury, who began developing the garden at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, England, in 1610. He employed John Tradescant as gardener, sending him to The Netherlands, Belgium, and France to obtain tulip bulbs, rose bushes, and cherry, pear, quince, mulberry, and orange trees. In doing so, he helped elevate the status of plant hunting from an enjoyable pastime to a lucrative profession.”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring white flowering quince from Oakland Cemeteries gardens, one of my favorite plants to photograph this time of year since it blooms so profusely as early as January and for several months thereafter. The first post is White Quince (1 of 2).

Thanks for taking a look!