Pyrus pyraster
Wild pear
Common names: Wood pear, Wild pear
At a glance
- Light
- Full sun
- Hardiness
- Hardy down to −28 °C
- Pruning
- Feb–Mar
- Harvest
- Sep–Oct
- Spacing
- 600 cm, rows 700 cm
- Water need
- Low
- Origin
- Native to Germany
Photo: Hectonichus · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
This description was machine-translated.
Description
The wild pear (Pyrus pyraster) is the native form of cultivated pears and a rare tree of light forests and hedges. Its small, hard fruits are raw and bitter, only edible when overripe or processed, but they yield aromatic cider, brandy, or dried fruit. The knobby tree can live for a very long time, tolerates drought, and provides an ecologically valuable habitat for countless insects and birds.
Care instructions
Plant the wild pear in autumn (October, week 43) in a sunny, warm location with deep, relatively dry soil; it avoids waterlogging. Water during the first years if dry, thereafter it is very drought‑tolerant. It requires little pruning, remove only dead wood in winter. Give it space, as it grows into a stately tree.
The care notes were machine-translated from German.
Garden year
HarvestSep–Oct
Soil & site
Soil pH
Soil type
loamy, clayey, humus-rich, well-drained, lime-loving, nutrient-rich
Plant the wild pear best in deep, nutrient-rich, base-rich soils, preferably chalky, with good drainage. It won't tolerate waterlogging or permanently wet, acidic sites. Loose, loamy, free-draining soils in a sunny, warm position are ideal; it takes dry spells in its stride.
Feeding
Medium feeder
Months
Mar–Apr
In early spring (March to April, before the buds break), spread ripe compost on the tree base and work it in shallowly; on lean soil, also rake in an organic nitrogen source such as horn shavings at the surface. Don't give nitrogen-heavy feed in autumn any more, or the shoots will ripen poorly. On naturally nutrient-rich sites, feeding can be left out entirely.
Pruning
Prune the wild pear in late winter (February to March, weeks 6 to 11) while it is dormant, before the buds break; the wounds then heal well and you can see the structure of the shoots. Unlike the cultivated pear, it needs no regular maintenance pruning: a thinning cut as needed for deadwood and crown shape is enough.
Overwintering
The wild pear is a native, fully hardy deciduous tree and needs no winter protection in the lowlands of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It sheds its leaves in autumn and goes into natural winter dormancy. Only freshly planted young trees benefit, in their first two years in place, from a loose layer of leaves or mulch over the root zone; with established trees you can leave this out.
Propagation
Methods
- From seed
- Cuttings
The most reliable way to propagate the wild pear is by sowing. Harvest the fruits in autumn, take out the pips and put them in moist sand in the fridge for about three months at roughly 1 to 5 °C (cold stratification). The seeds are cold-stratification seeds and barely germinate without a cold period. Alternatively, sow freshly harvested seeds outdoors straight away in autumn, so that natural winter cold takes care of the stratification. After the cold period, sow in spring about 1 cm deep; germination is irregular and can take several weeks to months, and in experience about half of the seeds germinate. Young plants grow slowly at first and only come into flower after many years.
Vegetative propagation by semi-ripe cuttings is possible, but succeeds only with difficulty and most likely from young mother plants: in summer, take 10 to 15 cm long, semi-hardwood shoot tips. Remove the lower leaves, insert the cuttings in a loose mix of sand and compost and keep them moist and warm under film or a propagator lid. The rooting rate is low and falls quickly as the mother plant ages. Cuttings from old trees will hardly root at all.
Companion planting
Companion planting is partly traditional gardening lore. Where the reason is known, it is given.
Some of these explanations were machine-translated.
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