The World of Apples

The apples that aren't

Quince

Cydonia oblonga, Rosaceae, the rose family

The quince is a hard, yellow, pear-shaped fruit, aromatic and many-seeded, usually made into jelly or cooked3. The tree is native from the Caucasus to central Asia2.

The Greeks counted it among their apples. Their mēlon meant an apple or, more generally, any tree-fruit, and the mēlon Kydōnion of Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen was the quince4. Latin made it mālum cotōneum, a variant of mālum Cydonium, the Cydonian apple, and from that came the Old French cooin and the English quince3,5. Cydonia was an ancient city of north-western Crete3.

A second Greek apple hides in the quince’s Portuguese name. Marmelo comes from the Latin melimēlum, a kind of sweet apple, and the Greek melimēlon, honey apple; through the Portuguese marmelada and the French marmelade it gave English the word marmalade6.

Where the sources disagree

  • Cydonia. Wiktionary reads the Latin as the Cydonian apple, translating a Greek mēlokydōnion5; the American Heritage Dictionary sees an older Greek word, kodumālon, reshaped under the influence of the city’s name3.

Sources

  1. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy: Cydonia oblonga, Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Supports: the accepted name and family.
  2. Plants of the World Online: Cydonia oblonga, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Supports: the accepted name and the native range, "Caucasus to C. Asia".
  3. quince, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition, HarperCollins, 2022. Supports: the hard, yellow, pear-shaped, aromatic and many-seeded fruit, used for jelly or cooked; the rose family; the derivation through Old French cooin and Latin cotōneum from Greek kudōnion, reshaped after Cydonia, a city of north-western Crete, from kodumālon.
  4. μῆλον (B), in Liddell, Scott and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Logeion, University of Chicago. Supports: mēlon as "apple or (generally) any tree-fruit"; mēlon Kydōnion as the quince in Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen.
  5. quince, Wiktionary. Supports: the derivation from Latin mālum cotōneum, a variant of mālum Cydonium, "Cydonian apple", translating Greek mēlokydōnion.
  6. marmalade, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition, HarperCollins, 2022. Supports: Portuguese marmelo, quince, from Latin melimēlum, a kind of sweet apple, from Greek melimēlon, honey apple; marmalade from Portuguese marmelada through French.