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Pear: A Perry Classy Fruit

© Audrey Stallsmith

"I say! I suppose," with a jerk, "you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?"

"I suppose I have," I replied.

"I did that last night," said Uriah; "but it'll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!"

Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it.
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

In the United States the pear has always been overshadowed by another fruit. Nobody speaks of something being "as American as pear pie," after all, and there was-as far as I know-no Johnny Pearseed! This may be due to the fact that the first pyrus trees imported to this country suffered terribly from fire blight. Or it could be blamed on the fact that the pear is what John Heinerman calls an "aristocratic" fruit.

In a nation which has always fought hard to keep itself free of a peerage, that may have been enough to doom the poor pome! In The Fragrant Path, Louise Beebe Wilder quotes Thoreau, who pointed out that pears "are named after emperors and kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses. I fear I shall have to wait till we get to Pears with American names which a Republican can swallow."

Wilder seems to agree, adding, "Nor is the Pear the friendly tree that we deem the Apple. It has not its kindly generous spread, giving grateful shade to tired man and ruminating beast, and curving its boughs to fit the forms of children; it is a stiff and upright tree growing naturally in a self-conscious pyramid, proud and aloof." (It is also very popular in France. That would probably be considered another strike against it these days!)

I am a little skeptical about all this, since I have never seen anything particularly highfalutin' about pears myself. And, fortunately, growers were able to overcome the fire blight problem by crossing European types with the more resistant-- though more thorny and gritty--Japanese variety, pyrus serotina (AKA "sand pear"). In fact, here in rural western Pennsylvania, the pear was until quite recently a popular canning fruit. And, in the Language of Flowers the pear and its tree stand respectively for down-home "affection" and "comfort." Its fall from fashion is probably actually attributable to the fact that even country people don't do much canning anymore.

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