NEW SERIES VOL. I 
NO. 2 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
K . * * * V 
N ' ■' VORK 
h . \ N iC A L, 
U A K& iv&£ 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN. MASS. MAY 6, 1915 
The Wild Pear Trees. The old collection of these trees is on the 
left-hand side of the Forest Hills entrance. Pear trees are natives of 
China and the Himalayas, and range westward through Persia and the 
Caucasus to southeastern and southern Europe. The genus has no 
representative in Japan or America. The wild types are rarely culti- 
vated in this country, although as dowering trees some of the species 
are as beautiful as many of the better known Asiatic Crabapples and 
their leaves, both when they are unfolding and at maturity, are much 
handsomer than those of any of the Apples. The flowers of all Pear 
trees are pure white and their large, bright rose-colored anthers add 
to their attractiveness. Some of the Chinese species have been grow- 
ing in the Arboretum since 1882 when Dr. Bretschneider sent here 
from Peking the seeds of a number of trees and shrubs from northern 
China. Among these were the seeds of what now prove to be three 
species of Pear trees. One of these, Pyrus betulaefolia, had been known 
earlier in France. It is a tall, rather narrow tree with pale foliage, 
comparatively small flowers and small russet fruits rarely more than 
half an inch in diameter. This is a fast-growing, shapely tree and has 
proved hardy in many of the northern dry cold regions of this country 
and Canada, and has sometimes been successfully used as a stock on 
which to work some of the varieties of garden Pears. Unfortunately 
it frequently suffers from the pear blight. More beautiful in flower 
and leaf is another of the Bretschneider Pears to which the name of 
Pyrus phaeocarpa has lately been given. This tree has unusually large 
flowers, large, deep green and very lustrous leaves and small, pear- 
shaped, russet brown fruits. There is a variety with globose fruit (var. 
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