224 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



URBANISTE 



I. Trans. Lond. Hort. Soc. 5:411. 1824. 2. Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 384. 1831. 3. Kenrick Am. 

 Orch. 186. 1832. 4. Mag. Hort. 10:131, fig. 1844. 5. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 417, fig. 190. 1845. 

 6. Gard. Chron. 68, fig. 1847. 7. Hovey Fr. Am. 2:21, PI. 1851. 8. A m. Pom. Soc. Rpl. 53. 1852. 9. 

 Pom. France. I : No. 32, PI. 32. 1863. 10. Mas Le Verger 3: Pt. 1, 193, fig. 95. 1866-73. II. Downing 

 Fr. Trees A m. 871, fig. 1869. 12. Guide Prat. 59, 308. 1876. 13. Hogg Fruit Man. 657. 1884. 

 Urbanister Sdmling. 14. Dochnahl Fuhr. Obstkunde 2:116. 1856. 



Poire des Urbanistes. 15. Leroy Diet. Pom. 2:712, fig. 1869. 



Coloma's Herbsl Butterbime. 16. Mathieu Mom. Pom. 197. 1889. 17. Lucas Tafelbirnen 109, fig. 

 1894- 



Urbaniste is another variety desirable for home use because of its 

 highly-flavored fruits — so sweet, rich, perfumed, and luscious as to be 

 a natural sweetmeat. The fruits are of but medium size and not particu- 

 larly handsome, but the taste excels the looks. The flesh is as tender, 

 sweet, juicy, and as delicately perfumed as that of Seckel or White 

 Doyenne, but with a distinct flavor and scent which give the fruits the 

 added charm of individuality. The crop ripens in October, in a season 

 when there are many other pears, but the fruits stand comparison with 

 those of any other variety and are welcome additions to the fruit -basket. 

 The trees have several defects, chief of which is tardiness in coming in 

 bearing, to remedy which grafting on the quince is recommended. They 

 are also susceptible to blight, and are not as hardy as might be wished. 

 Of all pears, the tree of this variety is one of the handsomest — clean and 

 tidy, slender and graceful, yet robust and productive. Fruit and tree 

 make this a valuable variety for home plantings. 



Urbaniste originated as a wilding in the gardens of the religious order 

 of Urbanistes, Mechlin, Belgium. After the suppression of this order in 

 1783, their gardens remained uncultivated for some time and produced 

 new seedlings of considerable merit. The beauty of one of these attracted 

 the attention of Count de Coloma, a well-known pomologist, who acquired 

 this property in 1786, and in due course propagated and disseminated the 

 variety under the name Urbaniste. Early in the nineteenth century, 

 Count de Coloma sent specimens of the pear to the London Horticultural 

 Society, which organization afterwards distributed it in England about 1823. 

 Thomas Andrew Knight sent cions to John Lowell, Roxbury, Massachusetts, 

 through whom it became disseminated in the United States. The Ameri- 

 can Pomological Society added Urbaniste to its fruit-catalog list in 1852. 



Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright-spreading, slow-growing, productive with age ; 

 trunk slender, shaggy; branches stocky, shaggy, zigzag, reddish-brown, overspread with 



