Cummins said this "This tree is vigorous, upright, and productive, and it has great fireblight resistance. Fruit size is inconsistent and crops should be thinned for optimal quality. It is not self-fertile, and it will need a pollination partner.
Maxine is a medium-sized pear that bears a very fine russetting over a green-gold background. It is sturdy, stores well, and does not bruise easily, making it a good option for small commercial orchards. The flesh is free of grit, buttery, and juicy, and the flavor is excellent. It is recommended for fresh eating, baking, and canning.
Maxine was discovered as a chance seedling in Preble County, Ohio around 1900. It was first propagated by E.M. Buechly of Greenville, Ohio. This tree is almost certainly the same as the Starking® Delicious distributed by Stark Bros. Nurseries.
My pictures above are maxine. Yours definately look like maxine. Look at the leaves and fruit they both look exactly like they should. The nurseries fruits are identical.
When they say fine russeting they mean like the one below. They don’t have a lot of that. The ones with heavy russeting aka frost rings are from my weather that year. If you look in that box a couple of mine stayed on the tree to long and turned yellow they call that gold and the others are green.
Sounds like it is time to pick off some squirrels. In my area a squirrel has serious predators. There are none left the eagles, hawks, owls, coyotes, bobcats etc. eat them.
Didn’t add any in 2023 but one added in 2021 to replace central leader on a callery multi-grafted tree is starting to get apical dominance over the 2020 grafts on side limbs that really took off after grafting.
No pears this year at all here except I noticed a half dozen Bartlett’s on a neighbor’s established tree.
There are no (not many if any) plums, peaches, apricots either. And sparse cherry set also.
Varieties added this year are Blood Bierne and grafts of 2 very old trees from a neighbor about a mile from my mini-farm. I did also put grafts on another multi-graft callery…but they came from scions collected a month earlier from other multi-graft trees.
Have a dozen plus pear varieties collected.
Maxine, as I recall from over 40 years ago as the only time I ate Maxine, is tops right off the tree in late August.
Dont expect much the first year but then it will be like you remembered it. The first year i ate it i could hardly believe how bad it was here. After that it was one of my favorites. My mom sure loves them. Always pick them and send her home whatever she wants. Disease resistant and delicious!
@clarkinks My Maxine only have one flower cluster.
My Clara Frijs has none flowers at all either. Both pears displayed biennial issue here. Do you see the similar behavior in your orchard?
Very good. I have such a tree having nothing…but freezes is the likely suspect, and lack of pollinators possible as temps did not hit 60 during bloom of many of them.
Have considered that there could be 2 seperate Maxines like Warren and Magness are siblings. @IL847 knows as well as i do if there is we have the good one " Maxine has an interesting history. The original tree was found as a seedling pear tree in Preble County, OH. It was named and commercialized by E.M. Buechly around 1900.
In 1930 Marvin Cook of Tipp County, OH discovered a seedling pear tree which was subsequently released in 1953 by the famous Stark Brothers nursery as Starking Delicious.
The similarities between these two varieties are such that they are now considered to be identical."
