It is a deciduous tree that bears hard, aromatic bright golden-yellow pome fruit, similar in appearance to a pear.

[3] The ripe fruit is aromatic but remains hard; gritty stone cells are dispersed through the flesh.

[7] The fruit was known in the Akkadian language as supurgillu; "quinces" (collective plural),[8] which was borrowed into Aramaic as ספרגלין sparglin; it was known in Judea during the Mishnaic Hebrew as פרישין prishin (a loanword from Jewish Palestinian Aramaic פרישין "the miraculous [fruit]");[9] quince flourished in the heat of the Mesopotamian plain, where apples did not.

It tolerates both shade and sun, but sunlight is required to produce larger flowers and ensure fruit ripening.

It is a hardy plant that does not require much maintenance, and tolerates years without pruning or major insect and disease problems.

Quince forms thick bushes, which must be pruned and reduced into a single stem to grow fruit-bearing trees for commercial use.

[16] In Europe, quinces are commonly grown in central and southern areas where the summers are sufficiently hot for the fruit to fully ripen.

In the 18th-century New England colonies, for example, there was always a quince at the lower corner of the vegetable garden, Ann Leighton notes in records of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Newburyport, Massachusetts.

[19] While quince is a hardy shrub, it may develop fungal diseases in hot weather, resulting in premature leaf fall.

[20] Cedar-quince rust, caused by Gymnosporangium clavipes, requires two hosts to complete its life cycle, one usually a juniper, and the other a member of the Rosaceae.

[30] Long cooking with sugar turns the flesh of the fruit red due to the presence of pigmented anthocyanins.

The term "marmalade", originally meaning a quince jam, derives from marmelo, the Portuguese word for this fruit.

Ripe fruits of sweeter varieties are washed and cleared of rot and seeds, then crushed or minced, mixed with cold or boiling sweetened water and yeast, and left for several weeks to ferment.

In Carolina in 1709, John Lawson allowed that he was "not a fair judge of the different sorts of Quinces, which they call Brunswick, Portugal and Barbary", but he noted "of this fruit they make a wine or liquor which they call Quince-Drink, and which I approve of beyond any that their country affords, though a great deal of cider and perry is there made, The Quince-Drink most commonly purges.

"[40] Ancient Greek poets such as Ibycus and Aristophanes used quinces (kydonia) as a mildly ribald term for teenage breasts.

Kate Young writes in The Guardian that the poem may be nonsense, but that slices of quince work well with a meringue and whipped cream dessert.