Trying to ID a friend’s pear tree. See attached photo. It’s an old tree, he picks it around August 1 here in 7B and ripens in frig for a week. He says it has fabulous taste, not much blight. Any ideas? @clarkinks does this look like any of yours?
jones pear two.pdf (109.8 KB)
jones pear.pdf (136.0 KB)
Gee, it looks a lot like Keiffer to me. That pear is extremely common.
Thanks Scott. Yes it does. Isn’t Kieffer a much later ripening pear? I don’t know much about pears, just learning.
It looks like my Kieffer. I’m in 7b also.
Glad to see I’m not alone in my appreciation for the Kieffer taste. II think in some areas it gets FB but I haven’t seen any on my tree.
When do you pick your Kieffers? My friend picked his yesterday. Believe my mother used to can Kieffers. Thanks. Steve
The skin tone is starting to get lighter now on a few and I think these could be picked now. I’m going to wait about a week longer on the others. The Kieffer and Orient will start to sweeten a little while on the tree but are better picked picked and put on the counter a few days. The ones exposed the sun tend to ripen first. Hope this helps. Bill
Kieffer has been the typical pear in my area to make pear preserves. They tend to pick them a little early for this purpose so they keep some texture while being processed.
Well then that seals the deal, it’s most likely Kieffer. Thank you. Very helpful everyone. I grafted a branch of it here this Spring so I’ll now change the tag from Jones Mystery Pear to Kieffer.
It looks like that’s an improved kieffer which ripens earlier and tastes better than kieffer. If it is you pick it green and it ripens to a yellow inside on the table. When it’s as ripe as it gets on the tree you’ll start to get windfalls. You can also give the pears the tilt test and they will break off in your hand when you lift the pear up. They will be very green at that stage and you will question picking them but it’s the right thing to do. I get hundreds of these pears every year. They typically ripen July or August for me whereas kieffer ripen in September here. Take a look at this thread Kieffer Pear. It’s worth noting this pear has some russeting on the bottom sometimes as does your picture http://growingfruit-images.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/3X/0/d/0d7828eab3c0c8e1e74d6ad7d860b4445d4e0990.pdf
This is one of my pears with leaves to use as a reference.
@hambone ,
After reading this I gave two the tilt test and guess what they were ripe!
Hi Clark- Thanks for weighing in on this. So would you say my friend’s pear might be more accurately called a Bowhunter Pear, since it’s too early for authentic Kieffer? That time of ripening is what threw me off when I spent all morning staring at pear photos. It was shaped like Kieffer but the timing was off. Steve
It’s an improved kieffer which is what it’s called to my knowledge. Did companies make up a name and it’s a kieffer sport? It’s a real possibility.
Where can I buy an improved Keiffer? Besides tyty’s!
Scions are the way to go and graft it. You can’t reliably buy them because kieffer are frequently mislabeled.
