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Medlar

Flora
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A small tree with white flowers and unusual brown fruits eaten when partly decayed, called "bletted."

Detailed Definition
Medlar appears in poetry as paradoxical symbol: fruit that must partly rot to become edible suggests waiting, patience, and beauty in decay. Shakespeare's crude puns on medlar indicate the fruit's suggestive appearance. The medlar's requirement for bletting (controlled decay) makes it represent things that improve with time or age, or that require transformation of accepted beauty standards. In orchard poetry, medlar represents forgotten fruits and old varieties, connecting to nostalgia and vanishing knowledge.
Example
Example in poetry:
Medlar's unusual fruit (eaten when blette or half-rotten) symbolizes acquired tastes and delayed gratification; In medieval poetry, medlar represents ancient cultivation and forgotten fruits; The tree's late flowering and fruiting represents patience and autumn abundance; Shakespeare's bawdy medlar references add humor to fruit poetry; The fruit's open end inspired crude folk names appearing in rustic verse; Medlar's revival in heritage orchards represents reclaiming agricultural biodiversity
Additional Notes
Medlar is a poet’s fruit because of its strangeness: it must be “bletted”, softened by time and near-decay, before it becomes edible. This makes it a ready metaphor for ripeness that arrives late, for desire and ageing, or for sweetness that depends on surrender to time. Its brown, open-ended fruit has invited bawdy and grotesque imagery in earlier literature, which can be used knowingly or subverted. As a tree, it also suggests neglected orchards and old gardens.
Also Known As
Open-arse (historic) Mespilus
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