North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Ed Forest" <edforest55@hotmail.com>]

I think the reason we often get the "html attachment was scrubbed" message 
may be due to using rich text formatting in Hotmail. So here is my message 
in plain text, hopefully this won't be "scrubbed":

In answer to the request for info on a list of pears, I have the following 
description of White Doyenne. Curiously I had been getting many requests for 
this pear in the last few years and now I know why, (I have not tasted it 
yet myself) a recent book came out which described it in greater than life 
terms (see excerpt following)
White Doyenne:  This ancient and world-renowned pear, its fruits the most 
delectable of any that come from a pear orchard, is now rarely planted in 
America. In the middle of the last century, (when owning the best pear 
varieties was the "in" thing), White Doyenne was one of the most commonly 
planted.
This pear is  one of the oldest of all varieties. It is said to have 
originated with the Romans and called by the name "Sementinum".
> From the following website a book review:
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/bkrev/GreatBookOfPears.html
The Great Book of Pears
      by Barbara Jeanne Flores
". . . There I obtained scionwood for White Doyenné, my favorite in recent 
years at the Filoli Fall Festival. This pear is also one of the author’s 
favorites. She introduces her book with "In Search of the White Doyenné."
Here is her description of it: "I picked up a small yellow pear shaped like 
a little turban that yielded slightly to my touch. The bag  read White 
Doyenné. I bit into it. It melted in my mouth. The taste was more like a 
fine, rich buttery chardonnay than any pear I had tasted. Like wine, it was 
sweet yet tart, with musky undertones and a strong perfume. Never in my life 
had I tasted fruit like that! I had eaten good juicy peaches from a Georgia 
fruit stand and wonderful mangos on a stick in Mexico, but nothing like 
this."
That was the good news. The bad news was that to taste these pears again, 
one must wait until next year’s tasting at Filoli. The alternative is to 
grow them yourself."
Kevin Bradley

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