THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 155 
ness that characterizes the fruits in happier situations. Size shrinks also 
when poorly grown, so that one may say that a small pear of this variety 
is seldom fit for dessert and too insipid for a good product in cookery. The 
trees are vigorous, hardy, and healthy, bear abundantly under favorable 
conditions, and succeed either as a standard or a dwarf. Possibly it is 
best grown as a dwarf, and in America at least is more often worked on the 
dwarfing quince than on the pear. In fact, this variety is the favorite 
dwarf-pear for garden and home orchard, and commercial orchards of 
dwarfed trees of it are not uncommon. On either stock, the tree makes a 
beautiful, symmetrical pyramid, comes in bearing early, and bears regularly. 
This variety is more popular in New York than in any other part of America, 
and while less planted than formerly, is still regarded as a standard late 
autumn variety. It is a particularly desirable sort for the pear-fancier. 
The original tree of Duchesse d’Angouléme was a wilding growing in 
a garden near Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France. About 1808, M. Audusson, 
a nurseryman at Angers, appreciating the beauty and excellent quality of 
the pear, obtained the right to propagate it. In 1812 he began selling 
trees of the variety under the name of ‘‘ Poire des Eparonnais.’’ In 1820, 
M. Audusson sent a basket of the fruit to the Duchesse d’Angouléme with 
a request for permission to name the pear in her honor, a request which was 
granted. At the exhibition of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 
held in 1830, Samuel G. Perkins showed a specimen which measured eleven 
and three-tenths inches. It was the only one that grew on the tree, and was 
considered to be the first fruit of this variety produced in America. The 
American Pomological Society added Duchesse d’Angouléme to its catalog- 
list of fruits in 1862. 
Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright-spreading, dense-topped, slow-growing, usually 
hardy, productive; trunk thick; branches stocky, shaggy, zigzag, dull reddish-brown 
overspread with scarf-skin, marked with small lenticels; branchlets thick, short, dull light 
brown, streaked with gray scarf-skin, smooth, glabrous, with many small, raised lenticels. 
Leaf-buds small, short, conical, pointed, nearly free; leaf-scars prominent. Leaves 
2% in long, 1% in. wide, oval, thick, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin marked with 
minute dark brown glands, crenate or nearly entire; petiole 12 in. long. Flower-buds 
large, long, conical, plump, free, arranged singly or in small clusters on short branches and 
spurs; flowers 13 in. across, 7 or 8 buds in each cluster; pedicels 1 in. long, slender, lightly 
pubescent, greenish. 
Fruit ripe October to November; large, often very large, 4 in. long, 3 in. wide, uni- 
form in size, oblong-obovate-pyriform, with irregular and uneven surface and with sides 
often unequal; stem frequently 13 in. long, very thick, curved; cavity acute, deep, furrowed, 
