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I'm partly reposting this question from the Name That Plan! forum.

I have this tree that produces fruit. Usually hardly any, but sometimes, as this spring, quite a few. The tree is in a largely wild and uncultivated area, next to a creek. It actually is somewhat overgrown with Bougainvilla. Last year I had one or two fruit, and I posted a picture on the Name That forum. One response was that they looked kinda like quince. Find attached some much better pictures from this year, showing abundant fruit and healthy leaves.

The fruit are small and pear-like. Right now, the fruit are about two inches long. The leaves are oval and shiny green. The blossoms are small, I believe, and white/pink. So this is not Texas Scarlet Quince, which is a popular plant around here. It was a small tree when we moved in 20 years ago, and it hasn't changed much in size. So I suspect it was planted (or the seeds were deposited by birds) LONG ago. This winter was unusually cold, with temps down to 20F or so. I understand that cold temps encourage fruiting in at least quince. Now, the immature fruit is tasteless. No sugar, no astringence, no flavor. Like eating soft wood.

Some think the fruit and leaves look like pear, and I'm thinking that maybe it is a pear graft-stock that doesn't produce quality fruit. Or maybe a Callery/Cleveland type pear (except those fruit are round.)

Any guesses?

Comments (16)

  • Tony
    9 years ago

    It is definately a pear.

    Tony

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    OK, thanks, but I've tasted immature pears, and those taste sorta pear-like. No sugar, but some astringence. These don't. They taste like *nothing*. When I get a few of them, they sort of disappear before getting ripe, which may mean that birds at least eventually find them tasty. I need to put some netting over a few of these and see what I get. So maybe they are pears, but I have to wonder if they aren't an edible variety.

  • booberry85
    9 years ago

    I think its a quince, a close relative of the pear. They were fairly popular in the early 1900's but have fallen out of favor amongst gardeners.

    Here's a nice little article about them.

    Here is a link that might be useful: In praise of the misunderstood quince

  • campv 8b AZ
    9 years ago

    Quince has a fuzzy surface like a peach Had one growing up. I think its a pear.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Thank you. I'm actually slightly familiar with quinces, since I grew up in a house that had a small tree, long ago. Back then, we never quite figured out what to do with them.

    But I asked in another forum, see below (in fact, I was specifically asking if it was quince, and was directed here) --- and there are a lot of folks over there who are convinced it is some kind of pear. I'm confused!

    Here is a link that might be useful: Name That Plant --

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Yes, campv. Thank you. These things are NOT fuzzy. So I'm leaning to pear.

  • trianglejohn
    9 years ago

    I have both fruiting quince and flower quince and pears in my garden - those look like pear leaves to me. Fruiting quince have silvery, blue-green leaves without the gloss or the point on the end.

    Pears don't ripen until they're off the tree and plenty of them have no or little flavor until they are full size. Pears will also cross freely with ornamental or flowering pears like Bradford Pears so it could be a hybrid. Most of the flowering types of pears have tiny round fruit.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Yes, I've been told that the leaves of these look very pear-like. Quince leaf pictures I've seen, as you say, are not glossy like these are. Also, I've been assuming that an immature pear would taste at least a bit like pear. I thought I remember that from once-upon-a-time. But evidently that isn't right. These things have NO taste at all. I mean zero. No sugar. No astringence. No flavor at all.

    I agree the flowering types should have round fruit. These don't. That would be interesting if these fruits were a cross with a flowering pear, though I'd have to assume that if I have a lot of identical fruit, there would have to be a flowering pear somewhere nearby.

    I take it that pear flowers aren't self fertile. Can I assume that a single pear tree can fertilize itself, or so you need another tree entirely? I sure don't have another tree.

  • john222-gg
    9 years ago

    A lot of pears are self fertile in the south. I have 3 different cultivars all self fertile. All my pears look just like yours but my pears won't be ripe until August or October. I don't know of any cultivars that get ripe at this time. Maybe someone with more knowledge about pears can help.

  • albertine
    9 years ago

    This looks just like some trees I have in the riparian zone. They are seedling pears. Most seedling pears do not bear palatable fruit.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Thank you, albertine. What exactly is a "seedling pear" ? Is that cultivated specifically as a rootstock? Now, I was under the impression that most pear rootstock was, in fact, quince. But I guess that some pear rootstock are really pear.

    Now, I've learned that pears are poorly self-fertile, so I have to wonder why I managed to get a significant crop of these things this year.

    It is also somewhat of a mystery how a rootstock pear got started here. It's not as if there is a forest of these things nearby, and the whole purpose of a rootstock is to bear other fruit, not its own. But I believe that when you plant a pear seed, what you get is genetically a gamble. So maybe that's what happened here with a bird dropping.

  • murkwell
    9 years ago

    What is meant by "seedling pear" is as you surmise, one that is grown from a pear seed with results that are a gamble. Perhaps it was deposited by a bird, or somebody chucked a core when they were done eating it.

    Self-fertility can vary from plant to plant within a species. If self-fertility were in high demand, I'm sure we'd see more cultivars that were bred/selected for that trait.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    OK, that makes sense. (Sorry, but I have little expertise in this arena!)

    So a self-seeded pear tree from a bird or whatever has a good chance of being an inferior variety. Not the variety of the fruit it came out of. So that being the case, that's most likely what I'm looking at here.

    Let me get this straight, and pardon my ignorance. When one wants a tree to produce high quality fruit, you don't get that natively from seeds, but rather with grafts from high quality trees? So when you buy a young fruit tree to plant that is advertised as a certain high quality variety, that's already pre-grafted with quality branches?

  • albertine
    9 years ago

    That's essentially correct, for pears and apples, and to a lesser degree for stone fruit. I live in an area that historically had a lot of orchards, and these trees are located in the riparian zone, and I haven't found one that is good for eating yet. Most seedling apples are not that good for eating either, but they can be used for cider. Michael Pollan talks about that in The Botany of Desire, that Johnny Appleseed was actually about planting trees for hard cider, not eating.
    To digress even further, peaches and pie cherries usually give you something edible from seed. There are lots of wild plums around that have small but sweet fruit.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    This tree of mine is actually in the riparian zone. It's just a few feet away from an urban creek. So it makes sense that if a bird is going to drop pear seeds anywhere, this is where they'll most likely survive.

    So you're living in an area with a lot of orchards, and the seedling trees probably were the result of those orchards, and birds spreading the seeds from the fruit they produced. But those trees, unlike the orchard trees that they came from, produce largely inedible fruit. That's fascinating.

    Now, it will be interesting to see if these particular fruit ever develop to the point that they have any taste at all. Yes, I am aware of wild plums that produce quite edible fruit.

  • parker25mv
    8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    I'm thinking it might be possible a pear tree pollinated a flowering quince and formed a hybrid. This would be rare though.

    See this thread for more information: hybrid between quince and apple

    If the tree does not appear stunted (no taller than about 12 feet), that would rule out it being hybrid, since inter-genus hybrids are usually pretty feeble.

    Occasionally people happenchance upon strange hybrid trees growing in an orchard.

    or could be Callery pear and flowering quince

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