The Sierra Pear sounded good to me - similar to Bartlet but higher quality and hardier. (It is a cross of Bartlett x Marquerite Marillat in Summerland B.C. 1969). I got scions from the ARS-GRIN program and grafted onto branches of three different growing pear trees. Three years later I lost two of the three to fireblight but Summercrisp was fine as were the Sierra grafts. I continued to graft over Summercrisp to Sierra the next three years, hoping it would be a good pear. This year it had the first fruit on the first graft, and my first “regular” pear fruit in my orchard. It wasn’t very large but it was certainly the queen of the pear world for me (the only other pears I had were some Summercrisp’s rather small, rather blah fruit).
I waffled endlessly over when to pick it. Finally decided it LOOKED like it had turned a lighter shade of green. Maybe. And I was pretty sure it felt just a little give at the neck. I hoped. I picked it October 3. Left it on the counter ten days then gave in and cut it up, the big anticipation over. Relief - it was very nice. Smooth, sweet, just a little grit around the core, nice texture, nice firmness. I now look forward to more, removing the rest of the Summercrisp branches, turning the entire tree over to Sierra. Sue
This Canadian Govt research center has been located in my home province for over 100 years. It has developed many great varieties of fruit. Surely you jest that they are merely stealing others work and slapping a new name on it,
In the world of apple (and pear) crosses, the same pair of parents can produce different children.
Cox’s Orange Pippins x Golden Delicious have produced quite a few outstanding children. The well known ones are Freyberg and Rubinetre.
It is possible that Sierra pear and Aurora pear shared the same parents. They may even have other siblings that we don’t know about done by other research centers in other countries, esp. in Europe
Those were produced by the same companies, production in the Canadian divisions were likely simply rebadged. Ford & GM both used to have manufacturing plants in Canada, although I believe GM has drastically reduced it’s Canadian presence.
How did this topic morph from pears to cars?
It’s a holiday in BC today, so I think I deserve a BC pear cider to bring us back on topic.
hey Sue. just to ,let you know i put the Sierra pear scion on my Ivans beauty hybrid mountain ash and it grew nearly 5 ft. since i put it on there. it’s the tallest branch on the tree. next spring im going to cut some off of it to graft to other trees including a harrow crisp i planted last spring.
How fun! Hope it fruits for you - that will be very interesting. Though I had a couple dozen blooms on my tree (which also has quite vigorous growth) I think a mid 20’s freeze did them in. Hopefully next year. Sue
I had a pretty good crop of Sierra’s this year, especially considering the wet, cool, no-sun season. Many of them did have insect dits and the smooth-russet covering was significant so they weren’t as “pretty” as my first one. They were dropping unripe fruit early October. Oct.11 a good looking pear dropped and it looked like the undercolor was slightly lighter and maybe there was slight give at the stem. Same with others on tree so I picked them - a nice 15#.
I waited a week then we started eating them direct from mid-50’s root cellar. The first ones were a little firm but nice flavor. Mild grit around the core. A few days later the sweet candy flavor kicked in! So good. By early Nov. some were getting soft so I sorted out 12 of softest/roughest/biggest pits and made delicious sweet sauce (though next time I’d core them first as the food mill doesn’t take out the little grits which get spread throughout. Not bad, just a bit irritating). The rest we enjoyed fresh daily until the last one today (Nov. 12). It was rather soft but still super sweeet. The RC is now in the mid-40’s. But I don’t think they would have lasted much longer even if we had more. I’m very happy with this variety! Sue
