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Walters Medlar Seeds

1000 Seeds, MEDL_S-1000 $220.00


Medlar is ideal for late fall early winter fruit harvest. The fruit 'blets'  or freezes and thaws leaving a creamy pear like texture and flavor. This particular Ecos strain was collected from a mentor nursery person, Cliff Walters, whom 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, his family allowed me to collect a few medlar fruits from a plant he had. I germinated his seeds and planted the trees on a hill top on a windswept sandy dune type soil. 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. The foliage and fruit is always clean and the yields are high. Initially I lost a few to fireblight, but eventually the others showed complete immunity. The Walters strain was by far the best medlar I have grown so far and it can be grown from seed.

It easily has double the yields of the large grafted selections. The medlar is the ultimate sauce plant perfect for combining with other sweeter fruits like apple or pear. You can put them in a pot, add a little water and stew them and then strain out the  seeds after it is cooked thoroughly. 

'Beacon':  A selected seed strain from the Walters group. Has the highest yields out of the batch with no fireblight issues. The tree 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. 

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 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 but sometimes a small portion of the seeds sprout in the third year. 



Plant Specs
Genus & Species Mespilus germanica
Seed Source Michigan-Walters cultivar
Height (ft) 15-25 ft with a width of 10-15 ft. Shrubby but can be pruned to a multi-stemmed tree.
Pollination Requirements Self fertile. Pollinated by honey bees. Flowers late usually missing frosts.
Soil Easy to grow from rock to sand to clay.
Climate Zone 3-9 Can grow in dry desert type environments.
Ease of Cultivation Easy to grow from seed, once the seed coat is worn down. Germinates and grows slow at first but puts on a sizable tap root just like hawthorn does. Surprising this unknown fruit is not used much but partly to blame is the rather bland cultivars that exist. This one has a more raisin and pear type of flavor once processed. Fruits within 4-8 years from seedling once the tree reaches 3-6 ft. tall. Immune to fireblight.