Continuing my unknown pear tree

I started posting about this tree here,
Continuing the discussion from Here comes the 2019 pear harvest!:

Well, here is some updates from 2 years later. A little pruning, and a lot of clearing out the competing scrub brush and some supplimented water.


So, as it turns out the plot thickens. The tree is not just “a” pear tree. It’s a multi-graft pear tree!! This year there were pears on parts of the tree that had bore a few fruit before (on the left in the picture) and on a different branch that has never flowered or fruited (on the right in the picture).

The pears on the left I thought were Seckle or some sort of Seckle derivative. Well based on the size of the largest pear shown below it is certainly not straight-up Seckle. They still have that strong spicy flavor and astringent skin, so they will need some time in the chill box to tame the skin and mellow the flavor. So, some sort of Seckle derivative…anyone have a guess? The overall average weight is 150g give or take 10g. There is still some thinning to do around this tree so fruit size may continue to increase, but growing conditions are much better than they used to be. Nearly every pear that had OFM damage (front left-left of picture 1) was rotting from the middle and the rest are still rock hard.

The pears on the right are new to me. Wow, they are fabulous too and entirely different. I don’t think they need time in the fridge but are getting some anyway. The skin is smooth, the grain or texture is fine with smooth wonderful pear flavor. I would have weighed the largest one too but today a bird ate the back side of the top off. I can’t wait to taste more of these in the future. It may be a variety I graft onto a limb of my Franken-pear in the future.

Last year was tough and all the blossoms on my Franken-pear tree froze off. The mystery tree had a few of the Seckle-type pears which squirrels ate all of. But there is a different limb low on the tree which had a late developing pear that never did ripen. The point is that this pear looked completely different than the Seckle-type and also the other new pear this year. It was taller and more narrow but still a small pear, though now I see size of early fruits on this tree is very deceptive. I can’t wait to see what more secrets this baby reveals!

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