MEDLAR, Mespilus Germanica, I.., of the tribe Pomex of the order Bosacex, regarded by Bentham and Hooker as a subgenus of Pyrus (Gen. Pl., i. 626; see also DC., Prod, ii. 633; Trans. Lin. Soc., xiii. 99), is a native of European woods, &c., from Holland southwards, and of western Asia (Loudon, Arb., ii. 877). It occurs in hedges, <fcc,, in middle and south England, as a small much-branched spinous tree, but is not indigenous to Great Britain (Hooker’s Stud. Fl. of Br. Isles, 132; Baxter’s Brit. Gen. of Pl., 493, and Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. ix. 86). The medlar was well known to the ancients. Pickering (Citron. Hist, of Pl., 201) identifies it with a tree mentioned in a Siao-ya ode (She-King, ii. 1, 2), 827 b.c. It is the ρχσπίλη of Theophrastus and Mespilus of Pliny. Loudon (l.c.) gives three varieties, diffusa, stricta, and sylvestris, — the last being spiny, but losing its spines under cultivation, —as well as four varieties of fruit. He also mentions several instances of large specimens throughout England. The well-known fruit is globular, but depressed above, with leafy persistent sepals, and contains stones of a hemispherical shape. It is not fit to eat until it begins to decay. (For culture of the medlar see Horticulture.) The Japanese medlar is Eriobotrya japonica, I. , a genus of the same tribe of llosacex.