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Sugar pears
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Posted by
strelnikov NE IL (
My Page) on
Sat, Sep 28, 13 at 22:51
| When I was a small boy a friend of my mom's had a sugar pear tree in her front yard. I loved to eat the sugar pears right off the tree. I have since tried to find a similar tree and bought one years ago but it is a small seckel pear and ripens later than the sugar pear I remember and does not have the same flavor. Still searching for the true sugar pear. Any ideas? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Sugar pears
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| you can look into Stark sugarsweet pear from Starbros. Tony F. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| Thanks but the Stark pears ripen in September. In fact I think I bought my tree from Stark Bros. Sugar pears ripen much earlier and have a unique flavor that is very different than other pears. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| I think I found what I've been looking for. William Coxe in his book "A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees" published in 1817 (copies are available several places online) describes a pear variety that matches the variety I've been looking for. It's called the Madeleine, Citron de Carmes, Green Chissel, or Early Chaumontel (different names for same variety). An old variety probably impossible to find anymore. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| Citron des Carmes is available, I had it in my orchard a few years ago but fireblight got it. You would need to graft it since I believe only scionwood is available. I'm not sure thats your pear but many varieties were called sugar in the US. Scott |
RE: Sugar pears
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- Posted by lkz5ia z5 west iowa (My Page) on
Sun, Oct 6, 13 at 0:09
| Sometimes this place has it listed for sale: |
Here is a link that might be useful: pear
RE: Sugar pears
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| I've got a piece of this grafted too, it's supposed to be a great early pear with citrusy aroma maybe possible if that helps your ID? I always think of Seckels when I hear sugar pear. USDA Corvallis will have a lot of the varieties you may wanna give a try. Pears have awesome graft take rates too. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| Thanks very much folks! Sierra Madre Farms has it. Not sure who gives official "sugar pear" status but seckels are seckels. Not the real thing. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| Just curious but why do a lot of the old pear varieties have French names? Are pears a French thing? |
RE: Sugar pears
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| French & Belgian- probably a climate thing as much as anything, I would guess. Flemish Beauty is great pear, and once made up a good deal of the American pear production, but it fell to fireblight fairly early in the 20th century. |
RE: Sugar pears
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| In the 1800s the pear was the most popular fruit in Belgium and France, and breeding pears was what all the foremost breeders were working on. They produced countless excellent varieties and nobody has come close since. Scott |
RE: Sugar pears
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| Scott, It seems to me that quite a few pear cultivars were developed by monks in France, correct? |
RE: Sugar pears
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| There were early pears developed by monks but nearly all the varieties still around today were bred in the ~1800s by more scientifically-minded people who figured out a huge number of crosses was needed to get good new varieties. van Mons is probably the most famous, he bred Bosc and d'Anjou for example. See the Wikipedia article on him. There were dozens of big-time pear breeders in Belgium and France in this period. Scott |
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