Chinese quince, “the tree melon”

Mu Gua reads “the tree melon”: a melon-shaped fruit borne by a woody shrub. It is the fruit of Chaenomeles speciosa, the flowering quince, a thorny shrub of the rose family with scarlet flowers, whose hard, fragrant fruit, smelling of quince, is harvested almost ripe at the end of summer, then sliced and dried. Its reference terroir is Xuancheng, in Anhui. Its name is older than its place in the pharmacopoeia: the Book of Songs devotes a poem to it in which lovers exchange quinces for jade ornaments, and in China Mu Gua has remained the emblem of reciprocal generosity.

A word of caution about translation: in everyday Chinese, the same characters now refer to papaya, a tropical fruit with no connection at all. The Mu Gua of the pharmacopoeia is Chinese quince; when in doubt, the botanical name settles it.

Restoring suppleness to the tendons

In traditional Chinese medicine, quince is warm, with a single flavour, sour, and everything follows from it: tradition says that sourness goes to the tendons and that it gathers. It is associated with the Liver, which governs the tendons, and with the Spleen, which transforms Dampness. Its primary action is to relax the tendons and open the collaterals: when Wind, Cold and Dampness lodge in the meridians and joints, the limbs become heavy and move poorly. The fruit’s sourness restores suppleness to the tendons, its warmth disperses Cold, and tradition regards it as particularly suited to the lower body, when Dampness predominates. It is thus readily combined with achyranthes root.

Harmonising the Stomach, through the Middle

Its second action is to transform Dampness and harmonise the Stomach, when Dampness clogs the Middle Burner. The Lei Gong Pao Zhi Lun says it in four characters: it assists the Qi of grains. Li Shizhen even turned this reading into a doctrine: quince answers the tendons not by nourishing them, but by regulating the Spleen and restraining the Liver, following the logic “Earth restrains Wood”. Dry-roasted, the fruit loses some of its sourness and is aimed more at the Stomach; raw, it remains the form for the tendons.