Can anyone Id this Asian Pear? I recently bought a house with a mature asian pear tree. Planning to graft some new varieties onto it, but I want to avoid grafting the same variety onto itself.
The photo was taken mid-September in zone 9b California.
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It is hard to positively ID it. But it looks like 20 Century Pear.
Stock photo.
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Thanks!
I am quite confident that the pears in your pic were not 20th Century Asian pear. The stock photo @RedSun posted was not, either.
20th Century is a yellow, thin skinned pear. Your pear’s shape and color do not fit 20th century. I don’t know what common Asian pears are grown in your area. Many look quite similar. Others may be able to tell you what they were.
Here’s what my 20th century pears looked like. It’s the pic in the 2nd post of this thread.
Is this 20th Century Pear?
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If you Google 20 Century Asian pear, you’ll see some of them show yellow color and some show darker color. They also call it “Nijisseiki”.
The one above is from Gurney. Here is from Edible Garden.
This one is from DirectGardening:
One more from Asiannursery.com
I just can’t say those pears are yellow color as you indicated. The other reason is that 20th Century was a very popular variety. It was probably popular in California too.
Only 20th Century and Shinseiki look like that. There are several other bronze varieties such as Hosui, Shinko and Chujuro, but they show a more golden glow. Korean Giant is larger and is darker.
If you think this is another variety, what is it?
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These look like my Shinko pears when not properly thinned, and especially if they are shaded too.
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I grow 20th Century aka Nijisseiki, Shinseiki, Kosui, Hosui, Korean Giant aka Olympic and bunch of other Asian pears.
I believe my pears are true to labels.
While many nurseries use correct pics, many more just copy from others or don’t care if their pics are accurate.
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I go to pick Asian pears almost every year from both a Taiwanese run and another Korean run Asian pear orchard. They both grow like a dozen varieties. Several of them look just like OP’s photo. All rows are marked with some names. But none of them fit the names we commonly talk about.
There are so many factors. They all have different growing conditions. They have different ripening stages. Some may not come to their true names. Some can have totally different names. Here we just try to guess what it is. I do not want to make a strong statement to say all those nurseries use the wrong photos to sell fruit trees…
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I agree with you that there are many Asian pear varieties that look similar to the OP’s pic. All I say is they did not look like 20th Century.
That’s why I hope others could chime in esp. those growing Asian pears in the same area as the OP.
Here is the same identical pear at different time and different lighting.
The next two photos are two weeks later, fully ripe. The color has more golden glow to it. It certainly looks different than previous photos.
This is actually my unknown. I lost its tag. I’ll guess it is probably Hosui. But I do not even care. It is very juicy and sweet.
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Round leaf shape looks like my Chojuro.
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