The fruit of this shrub of the rose family, native to Persia and Turkestan, has been cultivated since ancient times--and was easily naturalized in the Mediterranean area. The ancients dedicated quince to Aphrodite, and they were spread by Roman soldiers throughout the empire as a favored crop. In 812, Charlemagne himself exhorted the French to grow more of them. Chaucer, in medieval England, refers to them as coines, the French name.