North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <Lucky.Pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 05:57 PM 09/06/2001 +0000, Del wrote:
>My fruit growing neighbor just had the long awaited moment----their first
>pear to bear fruit is their 4 year old jubilee. they waited till it was just
>soft, like a ripe pear, both took a bite and both spit it out the same, so
>bitter they couldn't eat it. I have 4 other kinds of pears in the works, 
>maybe I'll wait a bit before
>grafting scions from this tree.
>Anyone have a jubilee? Comments?

Del,
I've sampled a number of old pears growing at old, abandoned homesites 
around the area here - quite a few old pear trees still going strong in the 
nearby Land Between the Lakes area, abandoned since the US government 
bought out/ran off the folks who lived there before they impounded the 
Tennessee and Cumberland rivers many years ago. But I digress...
Anyway, some of these pears have quite an astringent peel, but the flesh is 
tasty, while others are astringent all the way to the core.  I even budded 
a couple for a friend a while back - it was an old tree from her parents' 
farm.  She called it a 'Sugar Pear', and it does resemble Seckel, but only 
in outward appearance.  When she offered to let me keep one of the trees 
I'd budded for her, I respectfully declined.

I recently spoke with Dr. David Griffith, a member of the NAFEX Southern 
Pear Interest Group, who lives in Dadeville, AL.  He has a seedling pear, 
which originated in  Mississippi, which started out very astringent, but is 
becoming less so every year.  He's hoping to make a run at getting it 
released publicly.  I'm planning to try grafting it next spring, myself.

Seems like someone who's growing some of the 'perry' pears indicated that 
some of them are quite astringent.  Does Jubilee fit into that group?

Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY


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