Plant · P-373

Ussurian Pear

Pyrus ussuriensis

Ussurian pear earns its keep less as an eating fruit and more as what it lends to other pears: it is the hardiest pear species known, among the least susceptible to fire blight, and a common rootstock and breeding parent used to pass those traits into cultivated pears. Its own fruit is edible raw or cooked but wildly variable, since seedling quality swings widely - the best trees bear pleasantly flavored pears up to 4 cm across, while poor ones stay small and hard, so a grafted, selected tree is the reliable choice for fruit. It needs real winter cold to perform and struggles wherever summers run long and hot with mild winters, but where it does grow it shrugs off heavy clay, alkaline soil and even air pollution.