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  • From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Help with pear ID?
  • Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:15:00 -0500

There are 3 pears I am having trouble figuring out. I'll be grateful if someone here can figure them out.
One should be easy. It's a large plain green pear that turns yellow. The skin is thin, the flesh tender and grit free, the flavor very mild though distinctly pear like. The texture is not juicy and melting like I am used to in European style pears. What is distinctive about this pear is the weird lumpy shape. It's as if it is made in sections of different sizes, the larger sections create angular projections when seen from the bottom. The different sections kind of pucker together on the bottom end. The larger the individual fruit, the more extreme the lumpiness. I have seen 2 trees, both quite upright and obviously a good 30+ years old. I have seen 2 people at the farmer's mkt selling the fruit, so I know it is something that has been fairly widely available and of course quite blight resistant. So I have looked carefully though the most familiar names on the Corvallis blight resistant list. I figured it just had to be Maxine, esp after one old guy said he bought his tree from Starks. Photos of Maxine don't look like it though. Then I found just one painting of Beierschmitt that seemed to have the lumpy bottom. Any other suggestions or verifications?


The other 2 shouldn't be a problem, but they are for me. One is the tree in town that is again making a huge crop of smallish delicious melting fruit, and the other is my tree at home that makes pears that are squattier, thicker skinned, more russetted, redder, and at least a week later. I thought last year that my pears weren't as good, but now I am not so sure. The skin is definitely thicker and grittier on mine. A nurseryman ID'd the town tree as Ayers, which meant mine was something that comes in a bit later. I had assumed Moonglow till I saw some photos of Moonglow. Then I looked at Corvallis photos of Ayers, which looks more like my pear than the town tree does. So maybe the problem is that I have Ayers and the town tree is something similar that comes in just a little earlier. But I can't find anything that makes a small melting blight resistant pear shortly before Ayers.
We are a little behind the seasons in town, probably because of the cooler temps from the lake (nice in summer, not so nice in winter). My tree is young and the fruit get a lot more sun than the fruit under the large thick canopy of the town tree. Even the town fruit has rougher skin on fruit that got a lot of sun. But none of my fruit ever have any shine to their skin like the town fruit do. I know of 2 other trees that make fruit just like mine, so I am assuming that they have to all 3 be Ayers. If there is an odd one out, it would be the town tree. From what I am told, it had to be something pretty easy to buy. I suddenly started wondering if it could be Dabney, which the McMinnville nurseries would have acquired back when it came out in the 40's, and which could have been mislabeled and gradually absorbed under the name Ayers along with the real Ayers. But Dabney photos don't look right. Please help me out here. Can the same pear be a different shape and skin under different conditions? Or can you suggest a variety it could be?
Donna




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