Walters Medlar Seeds

This fruiting strain of medlar is ideal for late fall early winter harvest.  The fruit 'blets'  or freezes and thaws leaving a creamy pear like texture with a mild pear like flavor. This particular Ecos strain was collected from a mentor nursery person, Cliff Walters, I met when I graduated from college in the late 70's. His nursery, Dutch Mountain Nursery, specialized in fruits for birds. He invited me into his house for lunch one day and inspired me to start my nursery and ship plants around the country. After he passed away unexpectedly, his family allowed me to collect a few medlars from a plant he had. I germinated his seeds and planted the trees on a hill top on a windswept sandy dune type soil. I always viewed them as very important to me and kept them pruned. They grew vigorously in the low organic soil and began producing fruit when they reached six feet tall. Slow growing at first, the plants made up for it in the third year from seed and then began producing side branches. They grew pretty much like hawthorns but without the thorns. The foliage and fruit was always clean and the yields were high. Initially I lost a few to fireblight. But eventually the others showed good immunity. I had grown others from seed from Russia and those did not survive. The grafted varieties did well but the yields were lower and fruit did not taste as good to me.  The Walters strain was by far the best medlar I have grown so far even from seed. 

This is the most productive of the medlars I have with double the yields of the large grafted types . The medlar is the ultimate sauce plant perfect for collection in November when it tastes the best like a rich raisin and apple flavors. I am mixing it with apple sauce as a thickener and to add added flavor. Applesauce can be bland with todays modern apples. 

'Beacon':   'Beacon' is a new variety of medlar from Oikos Tree Crops: originally from our Walters seed grown medlars. This selection out yields all the other seedlings making it the most productive selection I have yet found in my seedling plantings. The plant also has the largest caliper of all seedlings now over a foot across at the base. It has never shown any hint of fireblight and produces a small tree that is truly a beacon on the hill I planted it on over 30 years ago. Medlars can be grafted onto hawthorne and this is normally the way it is reproduced clonally. For those with a proper rootstock, please request the scionwood and we will send 'Beacon' with the seeds or in January and February. Grafting can be done like apples in the spring in a dormant condition. 'Beacon' is available with the purchase of the seeds free upon request. There are two trees that are essentially identical that I collect seed from. 

The crop is harvested in December and processed over the course of two weeks. Seeds are then cold stored after a brief dry down. Finding good medlar seeds with few blanks is difficult for most cultivars. Our cultivar grafted planting which we no longer harvest from produces mostly blank seeds with a roughly 10 percent fill rate.  Beacon has a solid embryo in each seed found in each fruit. Treat medlar seeds like hawthorn seeds. They are slow growing at first and produce a long deep tap root. By their third year the plants grow at a more vigorous rate growing up to a foot each year or more. 


To germinate the seed:  Add a moist soil media around the seeds like slightly damp Canadian peat moss. Medlar seeds are doubly dormant requiring two years to germinate. The seeds require a warm, cold, warm and then cold again. The seeds have a very hard seed coat and along with the immature embryo the seed continues to grow and develop until the bony shell is weakened by soil bacteria and then it splits releasing the embryo and the root emerges. One way to overcome dormancy is to put in a propagation tray outside and cover the seeds with 1/4 inch of sand. Screen the tray to prevent pilferage. Most seeds will sprout within the second year and can be treated like apple seeds with a two year dormancy.