166 



THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



Jalousie de Fontenay. 5. Pom. France i: No. 44, PI. 44. 1863. 6. Hogg Fruit Man. 303. 1866. 

 7. MasLe Verger 3: Pt. 2, 157, fig. 175. 1866-73. 8. Leroy to. Pow. 2:295, fig. 1869. 9. Guide Prat. 

 64, 281. 1876. 



Birn von Fontenay. 10. Mathieu Norn. Pom. 215. 1889. n. Lucas Tafclbirnen 87, fig. 1894. 



The reader will discover no noteworthy characters in the description 

 of this pear; nor does the accompanying illustration make the variety 

 particularly alluring, although the color-plate scarcely does the fruits 

 justice in either size or color. The variety is to be found in many old 

 orchards in eastern America, but was long since relegated by pear-growers 

 to the limbo of nurserymen's catalogs. The only reason for giving it a 

 place in The Pears of New York is that the variety was once prominent, 

 and references to it and comparisons with it are so common in horticultural 

 literature that pear-growers are certain to want to know something about 

 it. As the following description shows, the variety is but mediocre in tree 

 and fruit. 



Early in the eighteenth century M. Leveque, an architect, acquired 

 possession of an estate near Fontenay, France. A number of pear seedlings 

 were growing upon this property, one of which was so good as to attract 

 M. Leveque's attention and he began propagating it in 1828. Later he 

 distributed cions of the variety to his friends under the name Poire de Fon- 

 tenay. Soon afterward the name was changed to Jalousie de Fontenay. 

 Leroy took the variety to the garden of the Horticultural Society of Angers 

 about 1835, from which place it was still more widely disseminated. It 

 soon found its way to America where it gained early popularity. In 1862 

 the American Pomological Society listed this variety in its fruit-catalog 

 under the name Jalousie de Fontenay, but shortened the name, in 1883, 

 to Fontenay. In 1899, however, the name disappeared from this catalog 

 and has never been replaced. 



Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright, dense-topped, hardy; trunk slender, smooth; 

 branches slender, brown mingled with green, partly covered with thin, gray scarf-skin; 

 branchlets thick, long, with short internodes, light brownish-green, faintly tinged with red, 

 dull, the new growth pubescent near the ends, smooth, with numerous, conspicuous, small, 

 raised lenticels. 



Leaf -buds very small, short, sharply pointed, free; leaf -scars with large, prominent 

 shoulders. Leaves 3 in. long, i| in. wide, very thick; apex taper-pointed; margin almost 

 glandless, finely serrate; petiole 2 in. long, variable in size, glabrous; stipules very slender, 

 tinged red. Flower-buds small, short, conical, free, singly on very short spurs; flowers 

 late, showy, if in. across, in dense clusters, average 7 buds in a cluster; pedicels f in. long, 

 lightly pubescent. 



