The Pears of New York. U. P. Hedrick
in flavor as to be fit only for cooking and perry. Indeed, the great object in growing apples, pears, and peaches was the making of cider, perry, and peach-brandy. Good eating pears were few indeed. But beginning in a small way with Coxe in New Jersey, as noted, a little later with William Kenrick, Newton, Massachusetts, and still later with Robert Manning, Salem, Massachusetts, the importation of European varieties of fruits became an important part of the nursery business. The importation of pears became an obsession with Manning, his nursery alone importing several hundred varieties. Manning’s work must have a more extended notice.
In 1823, Robert Manning established a pomological garden at Salem, Massachusetts, to collect and test as many varieties of fruits as he could obtain, native and foreign, with the intention of propagating and distributing those which proved most worthy. In furthering this great project he entered into correspondence with the leading pomologists of Europe, and from them secured trees and cions, which, with native sorts, brought his collection up to 2000 varieties of fruits at the time of his death in 1842. More than half of the varieties planted by Manning were pears. This, it will be remembered, was the period in which Belgian, French, and English pomologists were making pears a specialty, and led by Van Mons, the Belgian scientist, had succeeded in putting almost a new pear flora in the hands of fruit-growers. Manning grew in America nearly all of Van Mons’ introductions, received direct from the originator, and many acquisitions from other European pomologists as well, notably many varieties from Robert Thompson of the London Horticultural Society. Manning was one of the most careful observers amongst American pomologists, and to him pear-growers are indebted for the first full and accurate descriptions of the fruits grown in his time in this country. These were published in 1838 in his Book of Fruits. American pomologies before and many since were compilations. Manning made his descriptions first-hand and described no fruit “not actually identified beyond a reasonable doubt of its genuineness.”
After Manning, one might well scan the work of several eminent American pomologists who made pears a specialty. Robert Manning, Jr., continued the work of his father with this fruit and the two Downings, Wilder, Barry, and Thomson found the pear the most interesting of the fruits which they grew. To all of these men, pomologists are indebted for the introduction of many new and choice pears; for the identification of varieties; for the correction of the nomenclature of this fruit; for testing hundreds of seedlings and native and foreign varieties; and for the distribution of pears throughout the whole country.
A history of the pear in America requires some mention of its introduction in the Pacific states since that region is now the greatest center of the pear industry in the country, and the home of several notable varieties. Franciscan monks established missions in California at about the time the colonies on the eastern coast were fighting for their independence. To these they brought the cultivated plants of Europe and among them the pear. Vancouver, in 1792, found all of the hardy fruits growing at Santa Clara and the mission of San Buena Ventura, California. Robinson, a little later, describes extensive orchards connected with the mission of San Gabriel in which there were pears in abundance. In 1846, Edwin Bryant found at the mission of San Jose six hundred pear-trees bearing fruit in great abundance and full perfection. The missions were secularized in 1834, and the orchards fell into decay. But the pear and the vine withstood neglect, drouth, and the browsing of cattle to furnish food to the Argonauts of ’49. But little came of these early plantings that affects the present industry of growing pears in California either as to methods of culture or the introduction of new varieties.
As an example of the remarkable recuperative power of the pear, however, the orchard which Bryant described in 1846 at the San Gabriel Mission is noteworthy. An enterprising pioneer, W. M. Stockton, grafted over the old orchard in 1854 to improved varieties, and by pruning, cultivation, and irrigation succeeded in rejuvenating it so that the orchard became a profitable commercial plantation—the first commercial pear orchard in California. There are other instances given in the early accounts of fruit-growing in California in which the youth of old pear-trees was renewed by generous treatment, showing that the pear in a congenial soil and climate is most self-assertive in maintaining life. It could hardly be otherwise than that the health and vigor of these old trees stimulated the planting of fruits by the gold-seekers who rushed to this region in 1849.
Meanwhile, orcharding had been established as an avocation. In the rich Willamette Valley in Oregon, where the growing of wheat and cattle was the vocation, the plantations of hardy fruits made by Henderson Lewelling, near Portland, Oregon, in 1847, included pears and marked the beginning of pear-culture in Oregon. Lewelling’s venture, so pregnant with results in pomology for the Pacific Northwest, has been described in The Cherries of New York, and needs no detailed description here. It is mentioned only to call attention to it as another landmark in the history of the pear.
The padres began the cultivation of the pear at the missions. The pioneers of ’47 in Oregon and ’49 in California started a new era in the cultivation of this and other tree-fruits by introducing named and improved varieties and extending their cultivation along the coast from British Columbia to Lower California. So far, the plantings were fruit gardens, not orchards. The era of commercial fruit-growing began in the year 1869 in which the first fresh fruits were sent east by rail, the shipment amounting to thirty-three tons, mostly pears and apples. This event marks the beginning of a great industry in growing pears on the Pacific slope for the fresh fruit market, and was followed shortly by the introduction of canning and evaporation to use up the surplus product. The special demands of these three more or less distinct industries called for new varieties, and American pomology has been enriched by a score or more varieties of pears from this great pear region.
An event which has had a profound influence on pear-growing in the whole country was the introduction of Oriental pears and their hybrids. The mongrel offspring of the Oriental with the European pear were unfortunate in regions where pure-bred European sorts can be grown, but in vast tracts of the United States, as almost the whole of the South and the Middle West, only hybrids of the two species find a congenial environment, and here varieties with Oriental blood became a great asset. The introduction of these pears, also, has greatly stimulated the canning of this fruit in regions where fruit-preserving is an industry. It was hoped that these hybrids could be used successfully as stocks upon which European varieties could be worked, but the stocks have not proved satisfactory, and their use is decreasing.
The Oriental, Chinese, or Sand pear came into America from Asia by the way of Europe. The importation into Europe was made by the Royal Horticultural Society of London in 1820. There seems to be no record of when these pears reached America, but they were growing in the Prince Nursery as early as 1840 under the names Chinese pear and Sha Lea. Here, or in one of several nurseries to which it was sent by Prince, the Oriental seems to have hybridized with the European pear, the product being the Le Conte, which came to notice in 1846 and is the first of these hybrids on record. The Kieffer fruited first in 1873 and proved to be much better than Le Conte except in certain parts of the South. The Garber, another valuable hybrid, came to notice about 1880. There are now, perhaps, two score of these hybrids, with new ones coming from time to time. These hybrid pears, while not blight-proof, are more immune to blight than the European varieties, and pear-breeders are hybridizing the two species with the hope of obtaining a variety with the fruit of the European type on a tree of the Oriental type. Several promising seedlings bred with this combination in view have been announced, and the number of these hybrids is certain to be increased as time goes on.
The advent of Russian pears in the United States must also be mentioned as a notable event in the history of this fruit. Russian pears are hardy strains of Pyrus communis grown from time immemorial in Russia. The fruits of these Russian varieties are low in quality, but the trees are much hardier than those of strains coming from more southern parts of Europe. Some seventy or eighty of these hardy pears have been imported from Russia, the first shipment coming in 1879 from St. Petersburg. For a few years importations followed rapidly, and fruit-growers in cold regions had high hopes of being able to grow pears in competition with growers in more favored regions. The fruits turned out to be so poor in quality and the trees so subject to blight, however, that the cultivation of all but a few varieties has ceased. Of the whole number, Bessemianka, possibly, is the only one worthy of comparison with the pears of southern Europe, and this sort is rated as poor where the southern pears are