However Medlar away to your heart’s content.

I speak of the fruit – Medlars – Mespilus germanica – from The Medlar Tree or Common Medlar as it is known. The French call it ‘the dog’s arse’ –  ‘cul de chien’, and it is also called the ‘open arse’ or ‘arse up’ fruit, indeed D.H Lawrence named them “autumnal excrementa”. They aren’t terribly pretty as you may have guessed by now, here are a small selection of said fruits I gathered this morning from some nearby trees that are really very attractive in their own right. Honest guv.

In order to eat the fruit it has to be left to rot, otherwise known as ‘bletting’, and this too has led to its demise in popularity, however, once bletted until soft enough to scoop out with a spoon it is reminiscent of stewed apple with a touch of lemon and makes for lovely jam, jelly or fruit sauce they say points at ‘them’, huddling in a corner with their rotting fruit looking mad as a bag of bees.

As mine are not yet rotted, here is one cut in half I have found upon the pedia that is Wiki, courtesy of  Nadiatalent – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

‘Yum!’, I’m sure you’re thinking. Esme falls all over the show laughing, then gets a grip

I intend cooking a batch of them up as jam and shall report back as to how truly foul, or magnificent they be.

This post began as innocently as a newborn lamb, and yet somehow is ending with the following, courtesy of Shakespeare. Esme blames her readers for all this filth.

MERCUTIO
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree
35And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.—
O Romeo, that she were! Oh, that she were
An open arse, and thou a poperin pear.
Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle bed.
40This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.—
Come, shall we go?