[Gutenberg 46994] • The Pears of New York

The pear has no history if history be defined as a record of evolution. Even the annals of the pear, which but state events in chronological order, are a heap of confused facts and dates with important data missing at every turn. The origin of the cultivated pear is so completely hidden in prehistoric darkness that it can never be known precisely from what wild pear it came. The historian must content himself with recording what the pear was when written records began; what the touch of time has done since the first written accounts; and what the events and by whom directed which have aided time in making its impressions since cultivated pears have accompanied its flight.

Happily, it does not matter much what the pear was before husbandmen appeared on the scene. But from the day the pear began to supply the needs of men, and in its turn to require ministration from those it nourished, its history becomes of importance to all mankind. Those whom it helps sustain as well as those who tend the pear, may well ask: What was the raw material when the domestication of the pear began? How has this material been fashioned into the pear of the present? Who began domestication and who has carried it forward? And, gauged by past progress, what further progress is possible? These are questions of prime importance to those who seek to improve the pear; they throw light on the culture of the pear; and they are of general interest to all husbandmen, and to all interested in the world’s food supply. The history of the pear is important, as has been said, only as it is connected with the history of man. Yet, this history must begin with the wild pear.

Botanists number from twenty to twenty-five species of pears, all of which are found in the northern hemisphere of the Old World, there being no true pear native to the southern hemisphere or to the New World. Some ten or twelve wild pears are found in China, several of which overrun the limits of China; three or four are natives of Japan; at least one has its habitat in Korea; another is to be found in the western Himalayas; while the remainder, some eight or ten species, are found westward from Turkestan, through Persia and Asia Minor into southern and western Europe and northern Africa. From these statements as to habitats it is seen that pears grow wild over a very extended area and under quite varied conditions; therefore, it would be expected that the several species are quite distinct, differing chiefly, however, from a horticultural point of view, in the fruits.

But three of these wild species are now under common cultivation, though it is possible that through hybridization the blood of one or two more are to be found in cultivated varieties. Several others have horticultural possibilities either for their fruit, as means through which new characters may be introduced into cultivated pears, or as stocks upon which to grow orchard varieties. The three species of chief horticultural importance are Pyrus communis Linn., P. nivalis Jacq., and P. serotina Rehd.

The pear of common cultivation in ancient and modern orchards is Pyrus communis, native of southern Europe and Asia as far east as Kashmir. The species is now to be found naturalized in forests and byways of northern Europe, as it is in parts of America, so that it is impossible to tell precisely what its ancient habitat was. While most often to be found in mountainous regions in the great area which it inhabits, wild pears are common enough in the forests of Europe and western Asia so that it is probable that most of the early inhabitants of this part of the Old World enlivened their fare, obtained with the spear or the bow, with ready-made food from the pear. The species runs into at least three botanical forms, a dozen or more horticultural divisions and between two and three thousand orchard varieties.