Michael Pope, Blog Writer
Current varieties of domesticated pears likely originated from wild pears that grew in the hills of western Asia. Pre-historic humans consumed wild pears as evidenced by dried slices of wild pears found in cave dwellings in northern Europe. Humans have cultivated pears for thousands of years. The fruit was grown in China for over 3000 years and ancient Romans and Greeks grafted pears to create multiple varieties several hundred years prior to the birth of Christ. Homer described pears as a “gift of the gods” in The Odyssey and Pliny wrote about stewing pears with honey in his Natural History. Theophrastus of Eresos (370-286 BC) described horticultural techniques for pears including grafting, pruning, and propagation from seeds and cuttings. The pear was valued as a symbol of purity, justice, wisdom and comfort in China and Korea. It was sacred to Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess of nature and magic, and appears often in Christian cultures as a symbol of love and affection.
There are two principal groups of domesticated pears, the soft-fleshed European Pyrus communis and the crisp Asian pears, P. pyrifolia. Different varieties of pears were grown in medieval gardens throughout Europe. During the 17th and 18th centuries pear growers in Europe developed many of the ancestors of the varieties that we consume today. Bosc and Anjou pears originated in France and Belgium, Bartlett pears in England and Comice pears in Angers, France. A pear sapling transported from England on the ship Arbella in 1630 was planted by John Endicott in Massachusetts and still bears fruit today or 383 years later. Pears from the Endicott tree are described as coarse and bitter. In the 1840s, settlers brought many of the varieties grown in the Midwest and eastern seaboard to the west including Oregon. In 1847, Henderson Luelling transported more than 700 fruit tree saplings to Oregon by ox-team and established a nursery near Milwaukie. Some of the pear cultivars in his nursery included Barlett, Clapp Favorite, Early Butter, Fall Butter, Pound, Seckel, Vicar of Winkfield, and Winter Nelis. Parts of central Washington and southern Oregon became major growing areas for pear orchards. Hood River County is the world’s largest producer of Anjou pears, mostly grown on small family farms. Pears are Oregon’s number one tree fruit crop and Oregon is the 2nd largest producer of fresh pears in the United States. The State of Oregon named the pear as the official State Fruit in 2005.
The Hager Grove Pear Tree near Salem was planted in 1850 and is perhaps the oldest and one of the largest living pear trees in Oregon. During the past several springs, we noticed two large flowering pear trees adjacent to Mulkey Creek near the Bald Hill Farm house. The bark on these trees was twisted and riddled with sapsucker holes, yet every fall they produced volumes of small, in-edible (about a 10 on a pucker scale of 1-10) pears of an unknown variety. We thought that these trees may date to the early 1930s or 40s and asked Dr. Richard Waring if he would help core the trees so we could connect the age to the history of the farm. We provided two cores to Logan Berner who after much effort determined that the oldest tree may have been planted 125-130 years ago when Grover Cleveland was President and Corvallis had a population of 1500. The youngest tree was likely planted shortly after the end of World War 1 when Woodrow Wilson was President and the population of Corvallis had grown to 6000 residents.
Bald Hill Farm pear tree planted between 1885-1890
