On one of my first days working in the Country Roads office, I took a walk to clear my head. It turned out I had very much bright-sided my familiarity with desktop publishing software, and I was wound a bit tight trying to get the monthly events calendar laid out. As I talked myself out of trying to thumb a ride upriver on the next barge, I saw a man casually pluck a little orange fruit off a tree in front of me and pop it into his mouth. I waited for him to round the corner and tried one myself: I was curious, and if it poisoned me, I wouldn’t have to learn InDesign.
I did have to learn InDesign (whether I learned it well is up to anyone who read the Country Roads events calendar in 2017-18), because I had had my first, delicious but nontoxic, loquat.
“The smallish white blossoms look like those of their distant cousins, the apples, and give off a sweet smell that doesn’t travel as far as those of heavy-perfumed magnolias or sweet olives—a demure whisper, not a forward 'yoo-hoo!’”
Somehow, I’d never tried this treat, called a “misbelief” in New Orleans and a Japanese medlar in less linguistically vivid areas. Loquats come from China (hence the similarity of the name to that of the unrelated, also-from-China, kumquat), but have been widely cultivated as a pretty, low-effort landscaping plant in the American South, among other warm to warm-temperate climates. (A warning to optimists above the freeze line: the tree can survive farther north than it fruits.)
Like a lot of fruits, loquats are in the sprawling rose family. The short, sturdy-looking trees resist many pests and blights and don’t need much water, though they do well in rainy Louisiana. The smallish white blossoms look like those of their distant cousins, the apples, and give off a sweet smell that doesn’t travel as far as those of heavy-perfumed magnolias or sweet olives—a demure whisper, not a forward “yoo-hoo!” Loquats blossom relatively early, and the fruit reaches ripeness in Louisiana for a few weeks in March and/or April, depending on that year’s weather; a late frost can effectively wipe out a year’s worth. (See, for example, after this past winter’s snows: you may wish to put this article on the refrigerator to remind you to be attentive during the hopefully-better 2026 loquat-poaching season.) The fruits are smallish, oblong, and orange; fleshy and juicy, with a thick but soft and edible skin. Pluck them when they are fully yellow or apricotty, light orange, and come easily off the stem—if you have to really tug, that one’s not ready. Two brown seeds nestle in the center; you can pick these out daintily or see how far you can spit them, depending on your mood and the sort of company present.
[Read this: The Flawless Fruit Tree]
Loquats are cultivated in some parts of the world—especially in Japan, which apparently goes nuts for them, and home-country China, but in the United States they are farmed only on a small scale, with shortfalls in the admittedly low demand made up for by Spanish imports. The relatively delicate loquat doesn’t travel well, so is rare in grocery stores, though lucky shoppers may spot some in farmer’s markets or Asian grocery stores. Its most avid fans are foragers, but “trying something you found outside to see if it tastes good” is discouraged by parents and botanists worldwide, and so most people in the United States won’t know to be tempted by even the heaviest branches of the most sunrise-gold loquats. Online foraging communities, however, buzz with jam recipes, tricks to make an amaretto-like liqueur from the pits, and above all, tip-offs to trees that can be harvested.
After that first loquat in Baton Rouge, I became obsessed with them. I kept a mental roster of which trees in my neighborhood bore the sweetest fruits (in my experience, fruit quality varies widely from tree to tree) and waited for the blossoms with impatience every year. “Loquat walks” kept me marginally tethered to the consensus reality during the first few weeks of COVID sequestration, and when a friend came down with a nagging, dry cough he couldn’t shake, I picked him a pawful and left them on his porch in lieu of soup. (I found out much later that he “appreciated the gesture” but never ate them, so of course now I wish I had.)
I’ve been able to keep up my loquat habit even after moving away from Louisiana. Where I now live in South America, the seasons are reversed. I arrived in chilly June, excited for a year with two springs. Buenos Aires blooms for a few months in spring, the result of intentional planting of trees that flower one after another. Among the jacarandas and tipus and silk trees, loquats thrive under their local name, níspero. There’s a tree between my apartment and the grocery store, and I have plucked one every time I pass, a little bite of my last home in my new one.
