A plant with many uses. It has showy fragrant flowers, is easy to grow, very adaptable, can be used as a bonsai, it attracts butterflies, has edible fruit, can be used as espalier, hedge, or screen/windbreak, and it is drought and wind tolerant
Very nice for a shrub border, hedge, screen, barrier or espaliered to wall. Cut branches with swollen flower buds may be forced indoors, making a welcomed winter flower arrangement.
Japanese Flowering Quince is a dense, broad-rounded, deciduous fruiting shrub or small tree. It typically grows to 5 to 10 feet tall and as wide. The leaves are finely-toothed, oval to oblong, glossy dark green to 3.5 inches long. Leaves may emerge in spring with a bronzy cast. 2 inch, scarlet to red and sometimes pink or white five-petaled flowers bloom before the leaves fully unfold in an often showy early spring bloom.
Flowers are followed by hard, dot-speckled, yellowish-greenapple shaped fruits (2.5 inch Quinces) that may acquire red tinges as they mature in autumn. The fruit is called Karin in Japanese and is very hard and astringent and very unpleasant to eat raw, though they do soften and become less astringent after frost (when they are said to be "bletted"), much like persimmons.
They are suitable for making liqueurs, as well as marmalade and preserves, as they contain more pectin than apples and true quinces. The fruit also contain more vitamin C than lemons.
Zones 5-9.