Barland (PI 541123). -- An early-mid season perry pear with high acids and tannins. Origin: Traditional English cultivar, grown since before 1674. The original tree grew in the parish of Bosbury, Hereford, England and was estimated to be 200 years old in 1830. Fruit: Small, turbinate or round, 31-52 mm. long, 38-51 mm. diam.; stem slender, 25-32 mm., often fleshy where attached to fruit; no stem basin or calyx basin; calyx open. Skin dull green or yellow with gray russet at stem and calyx ends, lenticels numerous but inconspicuous. Flesh has some stone cells around core. Ripens late, September to early October in England's West Midlands, late September in western Oregon. Tree: Long lived, becoming large and tall; possibly a triploid; precocious bearing; the flowers are said to have a more pleasant fragrance than most pears; fruit scab may be severe. Perry: Fruit milled up to three days after harvest; juice acidity 0.92, tannins 0.26, specific gravity 1.058 for fruit from old trees, lower from young trees; produces a high acid, moderate tannin, fruity vintage of moderate quality. Barland perry has been reputed since the seventeenth century to have medicinal value in treating kidney disorders. -- Brooks and Olmo Register of Fruit and Nut Varieties. This pear, from one of its common names, may be supposed to have originated in the parish of Bosbury, near Ledbury, Herefordshire. The original tree is said to have grown in a field called 'Bare Lands' on an estate called 'Bosbury Farm' and to have been blown down about the end of the last century (written in 1886). The variety was well established in the 17th century, and in great repute. Evelyn (1674) says of it, 'The Horse Pear and the Bare-Land Pear are reputed of the best, as bearing almost their weight of spriteful and vinous liquor. they will grow in common fields, gravelly and stony ground, to that largeness, as only one tree has been usually known to make three or four hogsheads.' (Evelyn's Pomona) This fruit is well represented in Mr. Thomas Andrew Knight's 'Pomona Herfordensis' Plate xxvii.
Description: Fruit small, turbinate, pinched in near the stalk. Skin bright green, very much covered with patches and large dots of thick, pale brown, or ash grey russet, but not so much so, as entirely to obscure the green ground colour. Eye large, for the size of the fruit, open, with short erect segments, filled with the permanent stamens. Stalk an inch long, slender, and inserted in the end of the fruit, without any depression.
This variety has been much planted in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties. The trees have acquired an extrordinary size and height, and they are much distinguished by the beauty of their form and foliage. The largest orchards of this variety are now to be found in the parishes of Dymock, in Gloucestershire, and Newland, in Worcestershire. Very few farms on the eastern side of Herfordshire are without Barland pear trees, showing how extensively this favourite variety was at one time cultivated. Evelyn several times mentions the Barland Pear, 'and as no trees of this variety,' says Mr. Knight, 'are found in decay from age, in favourable soils, it must be concluded that the identical trees which were growing when Evelyn wrote, still remain in health and vigour. The specific gravity of the juice is 1.070.'