pears

[MELOC]

pardon my ignorance, but are there any flowering pears that produce small to moderate sized fruit? are there any pears that are poisonous like some crab apples are?

i found a pear tree that has small fruit. i never saw it fruit before and assumed it was a flowering pear tree like the one beside it i culled last year. it has fruit this year. my dad planted lots of stuff so it could be a good pear tree that has been dwarfed by being crowded and is now "seeing the light". the pears are dark looking and...small, lol.

[Paquebot]

There are just as many known varieties of poison pears as there are poison crab apples. I still have come across the first one of either!

There are indeed some small old varieties of pears which were considered pickling pears. Those that I remember were brown rather than yellow when ripe. The skin was also rough rather than smooth.

Martin

[gryndlgoat]

I don't know of any poisonous crab apples either.

We have wonderful Seckel pears growing wild on our property. They are covered every year with small brownish pears- absolutely delicious and a great size for canning! The deer love the windfall pears.

[anniew]

Pear size, like many other fruit, can be determined by how many fruit are on the tree. Thinning early in the season can help to increase the size of the resulting pears, but is, of course, partially determined by the variety. Pears should be thinned to one per cluster.
As an additional piece of information, plums should be thinned to be four inches apart, and peaches about 8 inches apart. It can be time consuming, but the results are great!
Good luck...I just am wondering how others tell when pears are ready to pick...maybe I'll start another thread.
Ann

[haypoint]

While searching for some old homestead apple trees, I came across some trees that looked like crab apple trees, with russet apples. Took a bite-Yikes! Real dry, nasty taste. Took me a couple days of thinking, internet surfing and I still couldn't figure what they were. At first I thought they were Melnar. Went back to see if they had rippened and to photograph them. Then I realized the leaves were like pear trees. I checked the fruit again and discovered some had the pear shape. Being small and in a cluster, I was just seeing the blossom end. From what I can gather, not eddible. I'm thinking they could be used as rootstock for grafting good pear varieties on, since they seem to be hardy in this northern Michigan location.