Clark
Do the flowers of your Warren pear look different from other pears’ flowers?
After 8 years, the graft labeled Warren pear blooms this year. The size of the flowers are noticeably smaller than other pears grafted on the same trees.
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Thanks, Clark. I would be quite disappointed if it is not Warren after 8 years of waiting!!!
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See the more rounded leaves than normal pears will be a dead giveaway. Doubt they are fully open there yet. I’m two weeks ahead of you.
I need to check the leaves more closely tomorrow.
I saw your list of bloom time. Mine is a bit diiferent.
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Clark- do you or others tree-ripen your Magness as Trees of Antiquity says is possible, above? I’d always thought it needed indoors curing but maybe not?
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We have tree ripened them here. They are sugar sweet and that means the riper they get the more that shows up looking for them.
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My Magness (3 of them on OHxF333) are all well formed trees with good branch angles and nice even distribution around the tree. I do very little pruning on these trees. Is that common for Magness / Warren? I don’t expect fruit for a number of years.
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Warren and Magness are not fast growers. Very little pruning needs done with these type of pears. On a wet year i will warn everyone they can really put on growth if they are not carrying a load of pears. Warren produces for me better than magness. Magness and Warren can both be delayed in fruiting. Aged cow manure worked wonders for mine. They seem to prefer a vigorous rootstock like callery or BET over ohxf333 at my property. The soil is heavy clay here so they grow very little the first 5 years on ohxf333.
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8 years ago, I grafted several pear varieties (10 total) on Blake’s Pride , which is on OHxF 97. Magness flowered in year 4, together with most other varieties.
Warren just flowers this year. It definitely takes a lot longer to produce than most varieties I grafted at the same time.
Last year, I grafted another Magness on a OHxF 87. The graft flowers this year, very precocious.
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Have the exact opposite experience here with Warren and magness. At first i thought magness was not magness so i grew it from 4 other sources other than ARS grin. All have been the same. Some i have grown over 8 years with no flowers besides in the 3rd year. The soil is not good here. Warren does great on callery but stays about 15 feet.
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All of my fruit on standard rootstock seem to be much slower growing. They also like to sucker more. My Warren, Comice and Mangess on OHXF all put out long branches while my seckle, warren, magness and Comice were slow to put out new growth. This is my second year with my pears so we will see if either flower given they are in pots. They are in 100 gallon pots but pots none the less so I would assume those would encourage fruiting.
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I grafted my first Magness on OHxF 87. It has grown well and flowered last year. Still, I was not sure about the source of that scionwood.
So, I got another Magness from a reliable source last year. I grafted this 2nd Magness on a branch of the first Magness. Both are flowering now. They look similar. I hope their fruit will look the same.
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If picked a bit early, Magness will ripen just fine in the fridge and keep a very long time.
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Identical but very good. I tried some say 2 years ago when purchasing the trees as I wanted to taste the fruit. They seem to keep the sugared flavor of Comice. Though there is Comice and then there is Comice. I tried the Comice from the famous gift basket company and it tasted like pure sugar. I then tried some Colorado grown ones from a local shop which was in September for some reason? They were not nearly as sweet. Raintree claims it ripens in October though so I wonder if the local shop Comice were unripe. With magness it is not good at giving pollen though so you need a minimum of 3 pear trees of to graft magness onto an existing tree to get fruit.
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Isn’t that odd that two pears (fruit) look identical when other characteristics such as leaves or flowers are not.
Do you have pictures of side by side comparison of these two fruit from your own trees? Love to see them.
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They are identical to the naked eye in every way. Leaves and flowers are also identical. There are small minor differences like fruit ripening times are different but only by a small margin. They are nearly identical twins. When there is heavy fireblight pressure the difference is magness will get fireblight and warren does not.
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Next spring I plan to notch below Warren buds to see if I can somehow force more flowers. W forms about 1/4 of a 7 year old 10 foot tree yet has exactly 5 fruit even after training most branches to horizontal. Magness on a different tree has 5 x that. W shares its tree with Potomac that has now also become a shy bearer so it may be the tree, not Warren. Might need fertilizer is my only guess- have it heavily mulched for years.
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I have Magness on quince. Flowered 3rd leaf. Unfortunately fireblight hitting it now but managed to set a few fruit.
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