The Medlar (Pyrus germanica) is a small tree, native of Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece, and which is generally held to occur wild in England and the Channel Islands only as an escape from cultivation. The theory is that the tree was introduced at some date prior to 1596—when we have record of its being in cultivation here—and that the Medlar-trees growing in the hedges of south and middle England are from seeds of these cultivated trees, which have been sown by birds, or more probably mammals who have eaten the fruit. The fact that it is not found in woods is taken as evidence that it is non-indigenous. Such evidence is not the most convincing, but it is the best available. It should be noted, however, that the agents credited with its distribution along our hedgerows have free access to woods, and that if these places were favourable to the growth of the Medlar, we should probably find it there, whether indigenous or exotic. Much more conclusive, we think, is its restricted distribution abroad, as already indicated. One would not expect to find a tree whose nearest home is Greece,
leaping over the whole of Europe and appearing as an indigene in Britain.
In its wild condition the Medlar is a much-branched and spiny tree, from ten to twenty feet high, in these respects resembling the Hawthorn; but, like the Pear, it puts off its defences when cultivated. Its leaves are large and undivided, of an oblong-lance shape, downy beneath, and sometimes with the edges very finely toothed. The solitary white flowers are large—one and a half inches across—with a woolly calyx, whose five tips expand into leafy growths. They appear in May or
June, and are succeeded by brown fruits, an inch or less across, which may be described as round, with a depressed top, which is ornamented with the remains of the calyx-lobes. They ripen in October or November.
Hawthorn (Cratægus oxyacantha).
Though distributed as a wild tree throughout the length and breadth of the British Islands, we are all more familiar with the Hawthorn as planted material in the construction of hedges, and this is a use to which it has been put ever since land was plotted out and enclosed. For the word is Anglo-Saxon (hægthorn), and signifies hedge-thorn. The man in the street would say without hesitation that Hawthorn means the thorn that produces Haws, but the philologist would tell him that it is only a modern and erroneous practice to apply the name of the hedge to the fruit of the hedge-thorn. It is also Whitethorn, to make the distinction between its light-grey bark and that of the Blackthorn; and May because of the period when it chiefly attracts attention.