Orcas Pear

General Fruit Growing
1

Seeing a few blooms on my orcas pear this year. This pear fruit ripens in early September.

’Orcas’ – seedling discovered by Joe Long, a farmer on Orcas Island, WA and sent to the Mount Vernon station in 1972 for testing. The trees are resistant to pear scab and productive, fruit is large and uniform size, good for canning or drying as well as fresh eating. Introduced in 1986. -Pears | Western Washington Tree Fruit & Alternative Fruits | Washington State University

Anyone else growing this rare variety?

9 Likes
2

I tried grafting it but the scion i got was sick or got sick. I haven’t regrafted that yet. Interested to hear how you like it.

1 Like
3

I knew I’d seen it listed for sale somewhere…Burnt Ridge Nursery has it for $27.50

2 Likes
4

Will have to read up on that variety! Thanks @clarkinks

1 Like
5

@clarkinks im growing a tree of it, a couple blooms last year looks like ill get a few more year , no fruit so far…grows decent its year 4 in the ground i believe

1 Like
6

I have an Orcas pear that I bought. I think from Raintree but might have been Burnt Ridge. Good pears. Similar to Bartlet, I think, but ripen more evenly.

2 Likes
7

@Carlin,
Sounds like your tree is,really close to producing. Ive heard its very high quality.
@Bear_with_me
The rumors of it being very high quality sound like they are true. At one point i was told it was a bartlett type pear but did not know if that meant in quality or size, appearance etc… thank you!

1 Like
9

@Seattlefigs
Looks deliciius!

1 Like
10

Orcas was again flowering I suspect we will get fruit this year.

1 Like
11

@clarkinks do you have an update on the orcas? How do the fruits compare vs bartlett and bosc?

1 Like
12

@tubig

The fruit stayed on my trees but not until ripe. It did drop early. @Seattlefigs aka Kim can answer that.

1 Like
13

@Seattlefigs how did the orca compare with bartlett and bosc?

1 Like
14

I have all three it is comparible or better than Bartlett…it is a bartlett type so not much use comparing to Bosch. It is large, fine grained and super sweet with yellow skin with red blush when ripe…I quite like it

4 Likes
15

i think it was only different in the skin it not much different it flavor.

3 Likes
16

I have a couple ‘Orcas’ grafts still in pots. My goodness they sure do like to start flowering young! I’m considering recommending them for people who don’t want to wait too long for production to start.

2 Likes
17

Covered with blooms this year.

1 Like
18

It is April 12th 2023 today. The orcas pear is covered with blooms but they are still in tight cluster and not yet open.

1 Like
19

My ‘Orcas’ still in a 5gal pot is covered in buds so I threw it in the greenhouse to speed it along in hopes of getting bloom overlap with my Asian pear. No harm in crossing them. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
20

Plant the seeds!

1 Like
21

That’s the plan. I have not yet tried ‘Orcas’ fruit, but I’m super impressed that it is so precocious. I already know my Asian pear won’t set fruit on it’s own as it had a decent crop of flowers with no fruit set last year so I can be fairly confident that any fruit set off it this year will be hybrid (from the ‘Orcas’ pollen) even though I don’t intent to hand pollinate or otherwise control the pollination. I figure with those precocious genetics in the mix some of the seedlings might not be too long of a wait before they start flowering themselves.

1 Like