THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
361 
PEARS AND PEAR CULTURE 
Varieties for Different Localities. Orchard Practices. 
Amateur pear culture in the New World is practically as 
old as amateur apple culture. Commercial pear culture is 
comparatively recent. The pear ranks among the aristo¬ 
crats in the family of orchard fruits. In the old days of the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, it was not uncommon 
to find over a hundred varieties of pears exhibited by a single 
grower. These great amateur collections are now almost 
things of the past. The orchards around Boston and the 
home plantings abounded in many varieties of the European 
pears. 
The great collection of pears in New York has long been 
recognized as that established by Messrs. Ellwanger and 
Barry in connection with their experimental orchard. This 
planting has furnished magnificent collections of pears for 
many years. These collections have been exhibited freely 
at the New York State fair and at the meetings of the Ameri¬ 
can Bornological Society, held from one end of the country to 
the other. The educational value of these exhibits is very 
difficult to estimate. It is unquestionably very large, and 
in itself is sufficient justification for the maintenance of a 
great collection of this kind. But such collections in these 
days of state-supported experiment, stations and colleges of 
agriculture no longer belong to the province of the individual 
or of the firm, but rather to the state-supported institutions. 
All honor and credit is due, however, to the public-spirited 
individuals who established these trial grounds before the 
days of the official experiment station. 
ADAPTATION 
The pear does not range as far north and practically no 
farther south than the apple. It is, therefore, more limited in 
its climatic adaptation than its relative, Pyrus malus. 
It is adapted to the clay loams of the country. As in 
the case of other fruits, wet soils are unfit. Although clay 
loam, when well drained, is the ideal soil, it will thrive on 
sandy loam. 
SETTING THE TREES AND MANAGING THE ORCHARD 
One of the fell diseases of the pear is blight. This often 
makes its appearance in the nursery row, and from thence is 
established in the orchard. It becomes, therefore, very im¬ 
portant that the grower should buy healthy stock, free from 
blight. Personally, I would be more insistent on blight-free 
stock than San Jose scale free stock; for the latter I could 
easily control, while in the former, I would be establishing an 
insidious enemy which was much more difficult to deal with 
than the scale. 
The majority of growers at the present time favor two- 
year old trees, but the age of the tree is not so important as 
the size, although I would not recommend a tree older than 
two years. They are set at from twenty to thirty feet apart, 
twenty-four feet being a somewhat favorite distance. 
POLLINATION QUESTIONS 
The investigations of Waite of the Department of Agri¬ 
culture and other students who have followed his lead have 
shown that a good many varieties of pears will not set fruit 
satisfactorily when planted by themselves in large blocks. 
This is called self-sterility. It is a characteristic which 
varies not only with the season but with the locality. Among 
the varieties which arc more or less self-sterile are Anjou, 
Bartlett, Clairgeau, Hall, Lawrence, Louise Bonne, Sheldon, 
and Winter Nelis. 
Among the varieties usually self-fertile are Duchess, Bose, 
Flemish Beauty, Kieffer, Le Conte, Seckel, and Tyson. 
Apart from self-fertility or self-sterility, the ability to set 
fruit with its own pollen, or the failure to set fruit with its 
own pollen, the question of the improvement of the cro]), 
both in size of individual fruit and in amount of fruit, by 
cross-pollination is an important one. It has been shown by 
quite careful studies that most varieties are improved by 
cross-pollination. Therefore, it follows that it is a good 
policy to alternate blocks of pears in the orchard. It does 
not mean that there should be any general mixing up of 
varieties in the rows or even alternation of rows; but it does 
mean that not more than three or four rows of a variety 
should be planted by itself. 
CLASSES AND VARIETIES OF PEARS 
Until the middle of the last century, there was only one 
class of pears in common cultivation in this country. This 
class came from Europe and was known as the European 
pear. Some of the varieties came direct, that is, were of 
European parentage. Others were American seedlings of 
European varieties. 
About the middle of the century, a pear known as the sand 
pear of China, Pyrus sinensis was introduced into this 
country, and by chance a specimen of this found itself in the 
same garden as a Bartlett pear in Philadelphia. The owner 
of the garden, Peter Kieffer, planted a seed of the sand pear, 
and the Kieffer hybrid was produced. This marked a new 
epoch in pear culture, for the sand pear type is adapted to 
more southerly regions than the European class. Le Conte 
is another member of the same hybrid origin, and with the 
Kieffer has been responsible for extending pear culture far 
to the South and Southwest, where the older varieties were 
unadapted. 
The Kieffer is noted for its vigor, its productiveness, and 
its mediocre quality of fruit. But vigor and productiveness 
go a long way in popularizing a variety. These two quali¬ 
ties are possessed by the Ben Davis. Hence, its wide popu¬ 
larity. The range of the Kieffer is South of that of the 
Bartlett, and it attains its highest beauty and best quality 
in the Delaware peninsula. It has been very extensively 
planted in that region and in New Jersey. It stood first 
in the order of popularity in New Jersey and Delaware in 
1900. More than sixty per cent of the growers of this region 
favored Kieffer ten years ago. It is probable at the present 
time that public opinion has veered somewhat, and that 
Bartlett, Duchess, and Seckel are in the ascendant. Bart- 
