An unidentified ornamental shrub in our front yard has yielded an unexpectedly generous harvest of edible pome fruits. The shrub is bushy, with 1/2 inch thorns. In the spring, it was covered in bright reddish-pink blossoms. This shrub began growing in our yard about 8 years ago. This year, we noticed that after the frost, heavy, medium-sized, oval-shaped yellow fruits began dropping....we quickly harvested about half a bushel of fruit, and adventurously tasted one. It was sour, with a quince-like texture, and with seeds encased as in apple and other pome fruits (am a total plant newbie-this is just what wikipedia told me). Unlike an apple, however, where the dried bits of the stamen stick to indented end, there is a smaller knobbly protrusion on the indented bottom of the fruit. Any help with plant identification is appreciated. Also, my daughter is interested in trying to grow one of these plants in her yard, but is unsure of whether it should be started from seed or from a branch. Photos of the fruit and of the bush/shrub are attached. Thank you! jh.
hello JBH maybe the flowering quince chaenomeles http://images.google.ca/images?q=ch...firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&sa=2
hi Pierrot, It's jhompoth; JBH's daughter replying.... Thanks for the tip! Your suggestion allowed my dad and I to do some poking around on the internet, and, after reading the following article http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-385.html, I think that this fruit bush might be, botanically, some sort of hybrid of chaenomeles. The fruit are more oval-shaped, with some fruit as long as 15 cm, weighing about 400 g, which seems to be more common to Chaenomeles Cathayensis, and have a sticky cuticle, as in Chaenomeles Japonica. Anyone know more about Chaenomeles hybrids and their fruit characteristics? Also, if sprouted from seed, how likely is it that the fruit of the new tree will grow true to type?
Foliage like that of C. speciosa. C. cathayensis is more seriously armed than the others and has a tall habit with long narrow leaves. S. x superba (C. japonica x C. speciosa) may also be possible, most named ornamental forms belong to these two. Seedlings likely to vary in flower color and growth habit.
