Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 7-11

Landscape Use: Edible fruits, screen background large shrub for mesic and oasis landscape gardens in the Phoenix area.

Form & Character: Evergreen woody large shrub to small tree depending on how it is trained, imposing, full, dense, mesic, formal.

Growth Habit: Moderate growth rate eventually reaching 15-20 feet (taller in climates with less extreme heat) with a somewhat lesser spread, dense canopy

Foliage/Texture: Leaves mostly whorled at the branch tips, elliptical-lanceolate to obovate lanceolate, 5" to 12" in length and 3" to 4" in in width; dark-green and glossy on the upper surface, whitish-or rusty-hairy beneath, thick, stiff, with conspicuous parallel, oblique veins, each usually terminating at the margin in a short, prickly point, coarsely serrate; coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Fragrant flowers, borne in rusty-hairy, terminal panicles of 30 to 100 blooms, white, 5-petalled, 1/2" to 3/4" in width. Fruits, in clusters of 4 to 30, oval, rounded or pear-shaped, 1 to 2 in long, with smooth or downy, yellow to orange, sometimes red-blushed, exoderm and white, yellow or orange, succulent mesoderm. Fruits have a sweet to sub-acid or acid flavor (tasty). Fruit contain 1 to 10 small seeds (normally 3 to 5), brown, angular-ellipsoid. Seeds contain the chemical cyanogenic glycoside which can be poisonous if eaten in significant quantities, especially by children.

Seasonal Color: None

Temperature: Cold hardy to 15^oF once established, but heat sensitive. Sunburn, called "purple spot", is responsible for much fruit loss in hot regions with long summers.

Light: Full sun to partial shade

Soil: Salt and alkaline soil sensitive, needs good drainage, prefers a rich organic amended soil.

Watering: Regular irrigations are needed throughout the year.

Pruning: Little to none required, and in Phoenix pruning is discouraged as loquat are prone to trunk sunscald. The thinning of flowers and young fruits in the cluster, or the clipping off of the tip of the cluster, or of entire clusters of flowers and fruits, can be done to enhance fruit size.

Propagation: Seed (remain viable for 6 months if stored in partly sealed glass jars under high humidity at room temperature, but the best temperature for storage is 40º F) or vegetative softwood cuttings (difficult to root). Cleft and veneer grafting have been used successfully in Florida and Pakistan respectively in commercial operations. Air-layering is successful if treated with 3% NAA (2-naphthoxyacetic acid).

Disease and pests: Bacillus amylovorus, Phytophthora, and Pseudomonas eriobotryae, and Erwinia are problems in California; however these diseases on loquat are not common in Arizona because of the drier climate.

Additional comments: Many will classify loquat as a small tree; however, given that in Phoenix it is a necessity to allow the foliar canopies of loquat plants to extend to the ground to prevent sunscald it functionally is a large shrub. There are over 800 varietal selections worldwide. Loquat fruits can act as a sedative. Loquat flowers have expectorant properties. An infusion of the leaves, or the dried, powdered leaves, may be taken to relieve diarrhea and depression and to counteract intoxication from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Loquat is one of the most popular cough remedies in the Far East and is an ingredient of many patent cough medicines.