Pastorale
PearPastorale
Origin and History
This variety has a long and complex European history documented across multiple 17th and 18th-century sources. Le Lectier cultivated it before 1628 under the name Musette d'Hiver rosate. Merlet identified it as Pastorale in 1675. La Quintinye listed it under the names Pastourelle and Musette d'Autumne in 1688. Duhamel du Monceau described it in 1768 (Duhamel Trait. Arb. Fr. 2:231, Pl. LV). Mayer, director of the gardens of the Grand Duke of Würtzburg, Bavaria, documented it in his Pomona franconica in 1776 and again in 1801. The variety was catalogued in Hogg's Fruit Manual (1884).
Fruit
Size and form: Above medium, pyriform, slightly obtuse. The summit is much puckered, and the fruit is generally larger on one side than on the other.
Skin: Greenish, nearly covered with gray-russet. Sprinkled with large brown dots. Vermilioned on the sun-exposed side.
Flesh and flavor: Whitish, semi-fine, more or less gritty around the core. Juice abundant, rather sugary, slightly acid.
Season
November to January.
Tree
Not described in source.
Uses
Not described in source.
Subtypes and Variants
Not described in source.
Book Sources
Described in 1 period pomological work
View original book sources (1)
— U.P. Hedrick, The Pears of New York (1921)Pastorale.
- Duhamel Trait. Arb. Fr. 2:231, Pl. LV. 1768.
- Hogg Fruit Man. 628. 1884.
Mayer, director of the gardens of the Grand Duke of Wurtzburg, Bavaria, described this pear in his Pomona franconica in 1776 and 1801, and Duhamel du Monceau wrote of it in 1768. Earlier still Le Lectier spoke of its cultivation before 1628 under the name Musette d'Hiver rosate. Merlet called it Pastorale in 1675, and La Quintinye named it Pastourelle and Musette d'Autumne in 1688. Fruit above medium, pyriform, slightly obtuse, much puckered at the summit and generally larger on one side than on the other; skin greenish, nearly covered with gray-russet, sprinkled with large brown dots, vermilioned on the side of the sun; flesh whitish, semi-fine, more or less gritty around the core; juice abundant, rather sugary, slightly acid; Nov. to Jan.