“Open arse” — medieval Europe’s rotting fruit delicacy found in Roman toilet

Medlar fruits (Jana Milin/shutterstock.com)

A 2,000-year-old Roman toilet in Switzerland yielded an unexpected discovery: 19 large seeds from a fruit medieval Europe was obsessed with, but which has now vanished so completely that professional botanists often can’t identify it.

The medlar was politely named, but for 900 years it went by “open-arse“—a refe…