This graft I have had for years parked in various spots and I finally got it in a sunny spot and its fruiting … man is it fruiting, huge pears weighed down to the ground by the load!
I have heard little about it, originally I think someone at NAFEX mentioned it was one of their favorites so I decided to try it. It also goes by just “Seuri” (no Li) in the name, I think the two are the same. It it sometimes (e.g. by me) mis-spelled as Sueri.
Its a very unusual Chinese asian pear, very large with russeted and bumpy skin:
Its ripening very late here, these ones are just the early bug-damaged ones. The flavor is unusual as well, with a bit of a tropical flavor in there. They are also hard and the flesh is opaque, its probably a winter pear which I should be cellaring until February or so for optimal flavor.
The entry in ARS claims this is Tsu Li but that is clearly wrong, it looks nothing like Tsu Li. The listing also claims its the same as Seu-Ri, a Korean pear, but in Asia the Seuri Li and Seu-Ri are considered different pears and the ARS pictures of the two accessions also look quite different.
I see Raintree is selling it now, has anyone else tried it? I think it could be a real winner since they should be able to cellar until spring based on how hard they are.
@alan you can see the bug damage on these, I have a lot of that on my late pears. Either OFM or CM, more likely the former I would guess since they are not coming through the calyx.
Yeah, I don’t control for CM after May and that and stink bugs have made Asian pears not worth growing for me since I no longer care that much for them. A really sweet Korean Giant is nice as an occasional treat in winter but A. pears could never be a fruit staple for me. It’s funny, I really loved them when I started my orchard a quarter century ago and at first they produced perfect fruit even without spray. I guess it’s a fortunate sequence of events that the pests arrived as my fondness waned.
Hi Scott, please excuse my ignorance, but are there other Asian pears that benefit from cellaring? I was only aware that A pears generally ripen on the tree and are picked then for optimal taste. Would you imagine that cellaring would change the texture to something more melting?
In regards to the name, I think that “Li” (written 梨) just means pear in Chinese. You can see it in other pear names such as ya li (鸭梨), tsu li (慈梨), pai li (白梨), etc. But I’ve got no insight on those other similar sounding cultivars.
Yes, the so-called “fragrant pear” (香梨) types are cellaring pears. You don’t see them in the market until February. I grew some of them and they had a flesh similar to these Seuri Li pears which is why I thought that Seuri Li might need cellaring.
I have half a dozen in my basement fridge now, we’ll see what they are like next year!
Scott,
This is a very interesting pear. I’m looking for a very late season pear. Thank you for posting the details about this one. Can’t wait to read about how you rate the flavor.
I pulled these out last weekend, some were already rotting. The ones not rotting had flesh turning tan. It wasn’t rot (yet), it was cell breakdown I think. They didn’t taste super great. So nix the idea of this being a storage pear!
Scott, I don’t recall the Seuri Li at the Repository being bumpy or looking like that. I thought it looked more like Chojuro or Hosui than your pictures. Golden and uniformly russeted. Also don’t remember it being huge, although these fruits probably weren’t thinned. The Repository is growing the trees for wood rather than fruit.
Could be climate and growing conditions.
This is off of several years old memories, so I could be mistaken.
My scionwood was from Corvallis, PI 541904. They also have a PI 307497 which is listed as the same pear. In looking at the 541904 pictures on their website I think its the same pear as the one I grew (i.e. I don’t think there was a scion mix-up along the way), there are streaks of red which is pretty unusual in an asian pear and mine also had that, also they are a bit elongated which mine also were. The bumps are probably due to my growing conditions.
Regarding the name:
I highly suspect the actual name for this pear should be ‘Seu’. Why? First, “Li” is just Chinese for “pear” so “Seuri Li” would just mean “Seuri Pear”. Second “Ri” is Korean pronunciation for the Chinese “Li”! In other words “Seuri” would mean “Seu Pear”. This is funny cause if you call it the “Seuri Li pear” you’re actually calling it the “Seu pear pear pear”. hahaha… Probably what happened is this pear got a name mix up while passing between China, Korea and the US and ended up keeping both “Ri” and “Li” attached to its name by mistake.
That said, I had the opportunity to taste this pear a few years ago at a Home Orchard Society fall fruit show and I LOVED it. The flavor was complex and full. It had everything I like about Asian pear, plus way more. Unfortunately, although I had gotten scion wood, I had a bad batch of rootstock and almost all of my pear grafts failed due to rootstock death so I don’t yet have the pleasure of growing this pear.
It’s pretty vigorous. I could give you some scionwood from mine, it may be a bit late this year, and I’ve already done some pruning, but there may still be some water sprouts up high that I didn’t reach with my casual while-I’m-passing-by-with-pruners-in-my-pocket style of pruning.
It’s on a tree with Hosui, Chojuro, and Korean Giant. Plus a couple just grafted last year. Of those, itt may be the most vigorous (although also on the South side grafted relatively high). It also blooms the earliest.
Thank you Jafar,
I think I should wait till next year before trying to graft any pears as I don’t have any rootstock available right now. I definitely appreciate the offer though!
I think you are onto something. I suspect it’s one kind of Su Li, in Chinese “酥梨”, a major pear type in China. The most famous one is from Dangshan, Anhui. In general, this kind of pear is very large, has elongated shape rather than typical round shape of Asian pear, and very juicy.
Seuri can be broken down as “Seu” (sounds same as Su) + “Ri”. Some Chinese mess up the sound of “r” with “l”. The pear certainly looks like Su Li, but I have never seen that kind of bumpy skin before.
