The Next Pear to talk about is LeConte’. The first thing that needs to be said about my LeCont’ pears is that they are nothing like the rather negative description you often see on the internet which seems to originate with a book called “The Pears of New York” by Hendrick. That book describes a course fleshed pear that’s lower quality than a Kieffer. The pears my tree produces matches the description of LeConte’ pear found on a historical document on the Forest Home in Macon County where the LeConte’ tree has a more clearly traced lineage to the tree brought to Georgia by Captain LeConte in 1856. Other historical documents refer to this pear and describe the high quality, fine textured sweet pear with blushed yellow skin that my LeConte’ is.
The pears produced by my LeConte pear tree are nearly identical to that of Golden Boy except they are smaller, slightly firmer and have smaller seeds. I lenticels on the skin of the pears are larger when you look closely. But man they are similar! The biggest difference which could just be a micro environmental difference is that my LeConte’ is a slow growing tree. It acts like it’s on dwarfing root stock when its supposed to be on calary root stock. Some sources say that it’s prone to fire blight; however, those are the sources that tend to use the description originating from The Pears of New York. I see no significant evidence to susceptibility to fire blight so far.
Would I recommend this pear? My answer based on my tree is that it’s almost getting a second Golden Boy tree except my Golden Boy is more robust and produces bigger fruit. The origins of the LeConte’ pear is well documented. A Captain LeConte bought what he thought was a sand pear seedling in 1856, and planted it at the LeConte’ Plantation in Liberty County Georgia. The tree turned out to be a hybrid with a Bartlett pear and produced soft sweet fruit. LeConte’ pears were being shipped to New York from Liberty County in the 1880s and were bringing $5 and $6 a bushel. I don’t know why The Trees of New York bad mouthed the LeConte’ pear so badly unless it was motivated by regional bigotry and completion, or maybe something other than the original LeConte’ Pear was being sold as such in New York by the 1921 publication of the book.
In the picture above Golden Boy is on the left and LeConte’ is on the right. The only clear difference between the two are the larger lenticels on the LeConte pear and the size and shape of the seeds. Everything else is identical except the LeConte pears have been smaller for me so far, but both trees are only three years in the ground in my orchard. God bless.