The Pears of New York was compiled by U. P. Hedrick and published by the New York Agricultural Experiment Station in 1921. This was the sixth in a series of monographs on fruits, all of which have become classic references on the fruit cultivars of the period. These volumes are much sought after by pomologists and fruit enthusiasts for the detailed descriptions and beautiful artwork.
As Hedrick wrote in the preface, his goal with The Pears of New York was
"To give an account of the history and uses of the pear; to depict the botanical characters of cultivated pears; to describe pear growing in this country... and, lastly, to give in full detail the synonymy, bibliography, economic status, and full descriptions of the most important cultivated pears with brief notices of varieties of minor importance."
The Pears of New York contains full descriptions and color plates of about 80 cultivars, and brief descriptions of many hundreds more. Historic descriptions and illustrations such as these have become important tools in verifying the identities of trees growing in our germplasm collection. Most of the cultivars illustrated are among the 1500 unique pears growing at NCGR-Corvallis today. Select a highlighted name to receive either a low resolution JPEG image (approximately 50K) or a high resolution image (between 300-500K) from this historic reference.
Thanks to Avery Wilkins for
scanning the plates, adding cultivar names and borders to the images,
and converting images to appropriate size and resolution for web
display.
December 1995 - Updated December 2000, J. Postman