Pear Tree
(Pyrus communis)

SPRING, with the bursting of green leaf-buds and the joyous opening of many blossoms, is essentially the season of hope. All Nature seems to rejoice in its birth to a renewed life, promising the warmth of color and sunshine in the coming summer, and the harvest of ripened fruits in autumn; and man reverberates to the notes of gladness, seeming to feel the very rising of the sweet sap in his quickened pulse and lightened heart. The colors of summer have not yet come; many of the trees put forth their blossoms, as it were, prematurely upon leafless boughs, and those blossoms are often of a chilly whiteness that might be expected to depress the spirits so recently emancipated from the dull thralldom of winter frosts; but the promise of verdure and warmer color is here, and man refuses to be depressed.

The Pear puts forth its snowy blossoms at a date when snow can hardly be assumed to be a thing entirely of the past, so that the trees massed in orchards suggest lingering snowdrifts; but before the blossoms fall the green leaves have generally made their appearance among them, and the likeness to snowdrifts is gone.

It is found--apparently as an article of food--in the Swiss lake-dwellings, and is mentioned, under the names "Akras," "Onkne," and "Apios," in the oldest Greek writers, as common to Egypt, Syria, and Greece. The absence of any Sanskrit name for the tree, and the want of similarity of those in use by Chinese, Persians, Arabs, and the Slavonic nations of Europe to those of the west, are most simply explicable on the theory of a primitive limitation of its range. The Latin Pyrus, the French Poire, the English Pear, and even the German Bira, can all be affiliated with the Keltic Peren. The late Professor Karl Koch derived all cultivated Pears from three species: P. persica, the ancestral form of the Bergamot Pears; P. elaeagnifolia, the Oleaster-leaved Pear of the Caucasus and Asia Minor; and P. sinensis, the Sandy or Snow Pear of China and the gardens of India and Japan. Professor Decaisne, however, recognised six races, descended from a single species : the Mongolic, represented by P. sinesis; the Indian, including P. rariolosa and others ; the Pontic, represented by P. elaagnifolia ; the Hellenic, including P. parriflora, a red-flowered form occurring in Crete; P. sinaica, which is perhaps identical with P. persica, the Wild Bergamot Pear, and others, such perhaps as P. nivalis, the Snowy-leaved species of the Austrian Alps, from which some of the cultivated sorts used in France in the manufacture of perry are probably derived ; the Germanic, including our two commoner forms, P. Achras and P. Pyrasier; and lastly, the Keltic, represented by P. cor-data or Briggsii.

This last-mentioned form, with leaves which are almost smooth and are heart-shaped at the base, and very small globose, apple-like fruit, is most interesting, as occurring in a wild state in Devonshire, Cornwall, and Brittany, and as, in the opinion of competent authorities, being perhaps the "apples" of the "Inis yr Avalon"--the Isle of Apples in the Arthurian traditions.

Pliny describes the varieties of Pear in cultivation in his time as exceedingly numerous, including both early and winter sorts ; whilst Gerard says of them:

"The stocke or kindred of Pears are not to be numbered ; every country hath his peculiar fruit, so that to describe them apart were to send an owle to Athens, or to number things that are without number."

He does, however, enumerate seven sorts, all of which, he says, and many more sorts of

"tame peares, most rare and good, are growing in the ground of Master Richard Pointer, a most cunning and curious graffer and planter of all manner of rare fruits, dwelling in a small village neere London, called Twicknam ; and also in the ground of an excellent graffer and painful planter, Mr. Henry Banbury, of Touthill Street, neere Westminster ; and likewise in the ground of a diligent and most affectionate lover of plants, Mr. Warner, neere Horseydowne, by London."

Among the Pears of the sixteenth century were the Popering Pear, mentioned by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, probably a Flemish variety, named from Popering in Flanders, and possibly introduced by Leland the antiquary, who was made Rector of Popering by Henry VIII.; and the Warden or Lukewards Pear. This last-mentioned variety seemingly originated in the horticultural skill of the Cistercians of Warden Abbey, in Bedfordshire, which was founded in the twelfth century. Three of these fruits appear in the arms of the Abbey. They were probably called Lukewards from ripening about October 18th (St. Luke's Day), and were eaten in the "Warden pies" coloured with saffron (as we now colour stewed Pears with cochineal), to which allusion is made in A Winter's Tale. More than two hundred and fifty sorts were known at the end of the last century, and nearly seven hundred in 1831.

In a wild state the Pear is but a small tree, sometimes a mere shrub, more often twenty feet high than forty ; but its rough bark, its upright growth and pyramidal shape, with pendulous boughs, give it a grace that does not belong to the more straggling Apple-tree, though the rosy blossoms of the latter may be more attractive than the wan bloom of its congener. The branches of the Wild Pear, like those of the Wild Plum, are generally spinous, and they spring from the main stem in an ascending manner at an angle of less than forty-five degrees, after wards curving outwards and downwards. The leaves are scattered alternately along the young shoots, but crowded together in bunches or "fascicles" on the old wood. Country-bred folk learn to distinguish at a glance the leaves of the Pear from those of the Apple. The leaves of the Pear are generally on a longer and more slender stalk than those of the Apple, and are consequently more pendulous. Speaking only of our wild forms, they, are also slightly smaller, not exceeding one and a half inches in length. They are sometimes heart-shaped at the base, and vary in general outline from "ovate," i.e. broadest near the base, through "oblong," i.e. with approximately parallel sides and broadest across the center, to "obovate," i.e. broadest near the point. On young trees the leaves are often lobed, as in the allied Service-trees, and in all cases they are at first pubescent, at least on the under surface. They vary, however, in different soils, especially on the Continent, where those of several of the mountain forms are as white on their under surfaces as those of the White Beam (P. Aria), and the form is sufficiently variable to acquire such names as "Willow-leaved" and "Sage-leaved" for some of the varieties. The leaves are always acutely pointed, though the apex varies from an abrupt point ("cuspidate") to a long and tapering one ("acuminate").

By about the middle of April the Pear-trees of suburban orchards ought, in favorable seasons, to spread over the landscape the snowy sheet of their full bloom. The flowers, however, continue for some time, lasting generally until about the middle of the following month, thus preceding the warmer-tinted Apple-blossom by about a fortnight. In this month the young foliage has made rapid strides, so that, though the flowers of the Pear are as "precocious" in their first appearance on the bare branches as those of the Blackthorn, the white mass of bloom is soon relieved by a delicate background of tender green. The flowers are grouped in flat-topped, or "corymbose" clusters, and each one of the bunch is an inch or an inch and a half across-the same size, that is, as those of the Apple, from which they are technically distinguished, not by their color, but by having their styles distinct to the base instead of being united below. This union, of course, takes place later, when the so-called "calyx-tube" binds together the five carpels into a single Pear. 

As the study of the not uncommon specimens of abnormal fruits shows, this structure, which is essentially nothing more than an expansion of the flower-stalk or "floral receptacle," contributes far more largely to the fruit than is the case in the Apple. It grows first as a thickened cylinder below the flower, and then expands in a globular form around the five carpels or "core" which it imbeds. This "core," it should be observed, occupies a higher relative position--i.e., is further from the stalk--in the Pear than in the Apple. The outline of the fruit, tapering gradually, as it generally does, into its stalk, though very characteristic of the Pear, is no more absolutely so than is the depression into which the stalk is usually inserted in Apples. A more universal distinction in structure between the fruits of the two species is the presence in that of the Pear only of the well-known "grittiness," due to small clusters of cells, thickened with woody deposits in their walls, which are scattered throughout the fleshy part of the fruit. Few Wild Pears produce fruits one quarter the size of the common cultivated varieties ; nor does their texture or flavor render them fit to eat.

In some favorable autumns the Pear exhibits beauties that perhaps surpass those of the pure white and virginal green of spring, its leaves turning to a vivid crimson. Though the tough and indestructible character of its fallen leaves may render the Pear undesirable on a lawn, it well deserves for its beauty alone a place in the cottage-garden, the farm-close, or the shrubbery. Few more delightful surprises await us in our rural walks than to come upon a well-grown Pear-tree standing apart in a small woodland clearing, whether it be decked in the snow of spring or the crimson of autumn.

Of our three wild varieties, none of which can be termed common, P. Pyraster has "acuminate" leaves, which, though downy beneath when young, become smooth, and a typically pear-shaped or "turbinate" fruit, tapering gradually into its stalk ; P. Achras has broader leaves, more abruptly pointed, which always remain downy or flocculent below, and a more globular fruit, rounded at its stalk end ; whilst P. Briggsii, as has already been stated, has almost smooth "cordate" leaves, and a very small globose fruit.

The wood of the Wild Pear is heavy, strong, compact, fine-grained, and of a reddish-brown tint. Though inferior to Box and Hawthorn for engraving, it has long been used for this and kindred purposes. Gerard says it

"likewise serveth to be cut into many kindes of moulds, not only such prints as these figures are made of, but also many sorts of pretty toies, for coifes, breast-plates, and such like, vsed among our English gentlewomen."

It is commonly employed for T-squares and other drawing instruments, and is said to be excellent as fuel, and to yield good charcoal.

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