The Medlar

We visited Hinton Ampner last weekend, a beautiful country manor owned by the National Trust, half way between Petersfield and Winchester. The cottage garden was ripe with pumpkins and crisp apples, as well as another little tree that caught my eye. I remember writing about medlars for my Concise Foraging Guide, but it was one of the few species I could only read about online as I had not only never seen a medlar tree, I didn’t even know where to look for one. Native to southeastern Europe, it is thought the medlar was introduced to Britain by the Romans; a single seed was excavated in the nearby village of Silchester, which was once a busy Roman town, and the trees were cultivated in the surrounding area during the Middle Ages.