Details for: PI 300693, Pyrus communis L., 'Bartlett'

The most universally popular pear. In California it is endorsed as four times more valuable than any other variety. Synonyms: Clement Doyenne, Delavault, Delavault de Clement, Poire Guillaume (France), Summer St. Michael, Williams, Williams Bon Chretien. -- W.H. Ragan, Nomenclature of the Pear, 1908.

Bartlett of all American gardens, Williams' Bonchretien, Poire Guillaume of the French. This noble pear is, justly, one of the most popular of all the summer varieties. Its size, beauty and excellence, entitle it to this estimation, apart from the factthat it bears very early, regularly and abundantly. It is an English variety, originated about 1770, in Berkshire, and was afterwards propagated by a London grower by the name of Williams. When first introduced to this country its name was lost, and having been cultivated an disseminated by Enoch Bartlett, Esq., of Dorchester, near Boston, it became so universally known as the Bartlett pear, that it is impossible to dispossess it now. (The first imported tree in Mr. Bartlett's grounds, was sent from England in 1799.) It suits our climate admirably, ripening better here than in England, and has the unusual property of maturing perfectly in the house, even if it it picked before it is full grown. It has no competitor as a summer market fruit. The tree grows upright, with thrifty, yellowish-brown shoots, and narrow, folded leaves. Fruit of large size, irregularly pyrimidal. Skin very thin and smooth, clear yellow, (with a soft blush on the sunny side, in exposed specimens,) rarely marked with faint russet. Stalk one to one and a half inches long, stout, inserted in a shallow, flat cavity. Calyx open, set in a very shallow, obscurely plaited basin. Flesh white, and exceedingly fine-grained and buttery; it is full of juice, sweet, with a highly perfumed, vinous flavour. (In damp or unfavourable soils, it is sometimes slightly acid.) Ripens fromthe last of August to the m iddle and last of September. -- A.J. Downing, The fruits and fruit trees of America, 1846.

Requires 800 hours of chilling. Used as an indicator for several bark-deforming virus-like pathogens.