Mystery Pear

[giedosst]

Hi Everyone!

So my wife and I just purchased a house in the Pacific Northwest (Washington) and the property has fruit trees! While we can see there are two apple trees there is a third tree which is producing a small round pear like fruit that we cannot identify.


Does this look familiar to anybody at all?

[imafan26]

Could it be a Japanese pear? It is very small.

[applestar]

It might be ornamental Callery pear like Bradford. Popular Landscape cultivars in the 80's and 90's, they are supposed to be sterile but a few sometimes manage to fruit, then the birds and animals spread the seeds and resulting seedlings grow into fertile trees that produce a whole bunch of crabapple sized pears -- "crab"pears? LOL THESE next generation trees can become source of weedy volunteers.

I chopped down my volunteer Callery pear when it had a trunk of about 4-6" because I found out that all the ornamental pears in the neighborhood were reaching their lifespan and constantly splitting down the trunk and giant limbs were tearing down after every major storm. Just in my immediate area, one neighbor had a tree that split and the falling side was leaning on the house, taking down the rain gutter and a fence panel, and another neighbor had a massive limb fall across her driveway near the sidewalk. Both trees were cut down afterwards rather than trying to save. They can also be susceptible to fireblight, and another neighbor next door had a dying tree that was a source of fireblight infection to my culinary apple and pear trees, but they didn't get rid of it until it finally got blighted all the way to the trunk and died.

If you see masses of white flowering trees in early spring, your neighborhood is probably full of them, too.

[JONA]

Just a few to look up to see if yours comes close Giedosst.


Winter Nelis.
Passé Crassane
Michaelmas Nelis
Bergamote d' Automne.

All are small round pears. I know it's a bit like hunting a needle in a hay stack. As there are very few sources that give good indentification of pears....especially the rarer ones.

[!potatoes!]

have you tried them? they do seem something like the offspring of ornamental pears - I would expect a more asian-pear texture (I.e. they would stay crunchy, even when dead ripe).