By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Walking through a friend's entry garden yesterday evening, I was enveloped in a cloud of fragrance that made me pause and breathe it in again and again. The scent, which spreads far even on damp autumn nights, was from the fruit on a gnarled old quince tree, which I'm sure many people take for a late pear.

Not many gardeners grow it any more, probably because this astringent fruit is only edible (and really very good) after it's been cooked into pies or preserves. Fruiting quince (Cydonia oblonga) is often confused with spring-flowering quince (Chaenomeles), a shrubby relation always grown for its early spring flowers, and sometimes also grown for its ornamental fruit.

Every year my quince-growing friend gives me one of these woolly yellow fruits that I put on my desk to perfume the room. But this year I'm thinking it makes more sense to get myself a tree. Then I can perfume not just a room, but much of the garden with one of the most evocative fall fragrances I know.