THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 201 
exposed cheek; flesh whitish, variable in texture, juicy, varying from sweet to a brisk, 
vinous flavor; quality poor unless grown under the most favorable conditions. 
ONONDAGA 
1. Horticulturist 1:322, fig. 77. 1846-47. 2. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 231. 1858. 3. Mas Le Verger 
3: Pt. 1, 179, fig. 88. 1866-73. 4. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 823, fig. 1869. 5. Leroy Dict. Pom. 2:480, 
fig. 1869. 6. Guide Prat. 74,292. 1876. 7. Hogg Fruit Man. 625. 1884. 
Swan's Orange. 8. Mag. Hort. 13:243, fig. 19. 1847. 9. Hovey Fr. Am. 1:21, Pl. 1851. 
Some seventy or eighty years ago this pear was widely introduced 
under the names Onondaga and Swan’s Orange, and for a generation and 
more was much grown in eastern pear regions. It has now practically 
passed from cultivation in commercial orchards, but is still to be found in 
collections and home plantings. The fruits are large, handsome, and of 
very good quality, resembling those of Bartlett in flavor and with even better 
flesh-characters. The trees are vigorous, hardy, fruitful — almost ideal in 
every character but one. The tree is so susceptible to blight that the 
variety can never have commercial value in American orchards. Whether 
or not it is worth planting in home orchards depends upon the planter’s 
willingness to suffer loss from blight. 
It seems impossible to trace this variety to its ultimate source. We 
know, however, that Henry Case, Liverpool, New York, cut a graft during 
the winter of 1806 from a tree growing on land of a Mr. Curtiss at Farming- 
ton, Connecticut. In the spring of the same year, Mr. Case grafted this cion 
into a tree about three miles west of Onondaga Hill, New York, and in 1808 
moved the tree to Liverpool where it grew and bore fruit. Many grafts 
were taken from this tree before it died in 1823. Up to this time, the variety 
appears to have received no name nor had it been generally disseminated. 
We hear nothing further of it until about 1840 when it was brought to notice 
by a Mr. Swan of Onondaga Hollow, who exhibited specimens of the variety 
in Rochester. Ellwanger and Barry were so impressed with the fruit that 
they secured cions and propagated it under the name Swan’s Orange 
which they changed later to Onondaga. Onondaga was given a place in 
the American Pomological Society’s fruit-catalog in 1858. 
Tree medium in size, vigorous, spreading, open-topped, very productive; branches 
zigzag, reddish-brown, overspread with thin gray scarf-skin, marked with many large 
lenticels; branchlets slender, short, light brown, tinged with green and lightly streaked 
with ash-gray scarf-skin, dull, smooth, the new growth slightly pubescent, with small, 
raised, pinkish lenticels. 
Leaf-buds small, short, sharply pointed, plump, free. Leaves 375 in. long, 1} in. 
