Consider yourself warned pears do have thorns in many cases when they are younger. In some cases such as Warren pear the thorns are frequent. My small yellow pear also has serious thorns when it’s younger.
I had nasty thorns on some rootstock sprouts that came up on my Clapps pear. Needless to say, they have been pruned out.
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Yes nearly all wild pears and rootstocks are thorny.
Here is a seedling Bartlett.
This is wild callery
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Glad you cleared up my issue. Nearly all my Kieffer seedlings have thorns. I have a nearby callery pear that I thought was the pollinator.
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Also J. plums can have dangerous thorns. Often young trees have built in protection from browsing animals.
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I’ve noticed those thorns on my young pear. I was happy to see them thinking that’s the start of spur formation. But I guess not… just thorns…
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I’ve found those thorns on pears help keep deer from browsing them. Most “wild” pears don’t make it through our winters however. I had a couple seed raised pears (seeds from IA and MI) here that made it through 3 winters and were getting good sized…then a bad winter hit and they died back to the roots. Even young OHxF 97s are borderline hardy.
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This is my small yellow pear today on its own roots. This is a years worth of suckers that need trimmed off. I usually don’t divide the suckers as rootstocks for obvious reasons. The good news is there are rootstocks when I need them!
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I get rid of anything with thorns as far as fruit trees go.
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I’ve got seedling citrus that have the spikes.
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