These are two different seedlings. Both are mostly thornless. The spurs have a mildly pointed tip, but nothing crazy. One has sickly yellow foliage and is half the size of its sister planted 5’ away. There is also a third, not pictured with no fruit and nasty, callery like thorns. The two that fruited did bloom close in time with local callery. I don’t remember driving past many fruiting pears to comment on whether it lined up with any of them. Most that I know where they are aren’t in my commute zone.
For context, I’ve always enjoyed gardening. I haven’t always been an intelligent gardener or had good internet access to research things. When I was a kid I developed a tactic of digging up and transplanting anything interesting. Anything I didn’t have a good spot for, I’d pot and sink the pot to the rim to cool and conserve moisture. This way, I could plant it elsewhere later. During these childhood years, I dug several “apple” seedlings. Some of these ended up forgotten when I moved out. 3 of them have survived and developed into fruiting age pear trees. I’m sure at one time I knew where each one came from. I remember digging at least one up from under a neighbor’s apple tree because mom loved his apples. I didn’t have sense enough to know #1 as a seedling it wouldn’t be the same apple variety and likely wouldn’t be true to type and #2 this would be at least partially due to the fact that it was a pear seedling that just happened to sprout under an apple tree.
In any case, I know where one came from, but not sure which. I had thought it was the one that ended up thorny, but wouldn’t bet much money on memory. The other two might have come from my grandfather’s farm. I know I collected some plants there, but don’t specifically remember apples or pears. His farm used to be a pear orchard long ago and has a few trees still. Maybe I’ll go back one day and see if I can find the “match” to these. I can’t swear that’s where they are from, but my parents farm had vary few if any callery and I now live on the other side of the neighbor I took at least the one from and have only ever seen tiny fruit-big thorn callery here, and only a few at that.
In your experience have these crosses been useable pears? I was planning to graft over this winter with some kind of cooking pear (mom loves to cook desserts and do preserves and such) but now I’m curious what these fruits will be like. I may try to stick a scion on something to produce “rootstock seed” since they are larger fruited. I have thought about trying to grow a callery to get seed for rootstock from, but don’t want to contribute to an invasive problem. Especially since my area doesn’t have a major problem with invasive callery yet. My understanding is that they are usually spread by birds, so a larger fruited callery should mean less invasive potential both at the parent tree and from any of the resulting rootstocks that end up flowering.
I have a graft of a callery cross very similar to the fruit you posted. The tree is incredibly productive making ropes of small 1 inch diameter pears. They are both bland and bad flavored. Give yours a try. I would be very surprised if yours are edible.
I might ask for a scion of the largest and healthiest tree this winter. I’m collecting callery hybrids to see if fireblight tolerance and some other interesting traits can be moved into large fruited domestic pears.
Sounds great! I was hoping someone was working on something like that. Please remind me this winter if I forget to reach out and I’ll be glad to donate a few sticks to the cause. I really think breeding for resistance to disease is a big need. Unfortunately it’s probably a need never to be permanently solved as disease keeps getting “better” too. I do think it’s a better long term strategy than fully relying on sprays that will eventually become obsolete as disease evolves. Sprays are a great bandaid, but only one mutation away from useless and overuse can speed this up. The sheep community has learned this the hard way with anthelmintics.
Hopefully I’ll catch a few ripe whenever that happens and can give a taste review.
This is the callery trait I want most in a pear. I want this foliage on a Warren pear with double blossoms from Cabot (Vermont). Bump in a very good dose of fireblight resistance and it will be a winner.
Maybe I’ll remember to get a picture of what these trees do in fall. It’s a little way off though so no promises. I can’t remember at the moment what fall foliage looks like.
Posting here in case it’s of interest to anyone else. The pears are starting to fall, though most are still hard. I assume they have tipped out on size. The darker, rounder fruit above the dollar is from the smaller tree, fruit below the dollar is of very similar height but are smaller in diameter.
I have had these and wonder what they are. I assume they may have started as Callery rootstock. A failed graft that the rootstock then took over. Then crossed to Callery. Perhaps Harbin pear. I have no idea what the fruit of the Harbin pear looks like.
Those are callery crossed with asian or european pears. We need about 30 generations of those crosses. Similar to what was done with american x kaki persimmons. The first 29 crosses would be awful. By the time we made 20 to 30 crosses they would be very good. Plant all those seeds 50% will be small callery and 50% large. Nature is doing it in front of our eyes. Nature is saying callery dont die from fireblight. The callery is telling all the deer to come eat my larger fruit and poop out my seeds in piles of fertilizer.
Good guess, but its APOC 208. Been painting mobile home roofs. My for pay job is home repair/maintenance and I’ve picked up a customer with a pile of rental trailers. Bad thing is, I used nitrile gloves…but had a failure.
Sounds good! I’ll be glad to send them. As we’ve discussed, I’m looking for several varieties so we can definitely work something out. Maybe I can add some cash or something on my end and get several good pears from you if you’ve got Scion to spare from a few.
