I don’t remember mentioning the quince this spring, but I’ve been enjoying the blooms for weeks, maybe almost two months. I noticed today that it still has new buds, quite a run for this modest shrub.
Have I also mentioned that merely the word quince always takes me back to my childhood neighborhood, and the quince tree in the back yard down the street? We climbed it several times, but preferred the tall pine nearby, even though we got pitch on our hands from it and not the quince. We liked getting up above the roof of the two-story house nearby.
A quick perusal of WikiPee suggests that the quince I climbed and the quince that’s blooming are only distantly related, each belonging to a different genus. The common term “quince” thus deviates from botanical taxonomy.
However, I prefer to keep these two plants I have known linked, and enjoy warm-fuzzies from memories I associate with this particular quince.
24 March 2015 at 9:00 pm
Rebecca says:
For me, quince always is a reminder of Edward Lear’s owl and pussycat who “dined on mince, and slices of quince / which they ate with a runcible spoon…” (And that is a fancy way of describing a “spork.”)