island of trees: The pear that bears no pears

At the corner of Berri and Roy streets in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough of Montreal grows this Chanticleer pear, Pyrus calleryana Chantecler. Its leaves are just beginning to change colour from glossy dark green to yellow. In a week's time, there will be reds and oranges too. Note the fruit that bear no resemblance to our notion of a pear. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux.

So closely do we associate the pear tree with fruit having the pear shape, we miss a whole series of trees that are, in fact pears, but whose small, round and hard fruit most closely resemble a small crabapple. For several years, there were three lovely, small-fruit bearing trees on my regular walking circuits that I couldn’t identify because I was unaware of the “other” type of pear.

One of these is the snow pear, Pyrus nivalis, which, true to its common name, has a snow-dusted quality to its leaf. When I first noticed this tree, it was spring and the recently emerged leaves were grouped together in closed clusters, resembling Chinese lanterns. It was a most beautiful and bewildering site as I had no clue what this tree with grey furry, elliptical leaves could be.

Later, flat clusters of five-petalled white flowers emerged from the upper branches, which reached the third floor balcony of the this Laval Avenue triplex just north of Duluth on the east side. Clearly this was something in the rose family and though the pale bark had a vague cherry quality in the way it was beginning to crack, it was too early for cherry flowers.

Then there was the mystery tree on the southwest corner of Milton and Aylmer streets in the McGill Ghetto. This one shone in winter with its lustrous pale grey bark and the masses of tiny red fruit dotting the whiteness of the surrounding winter sky and the pale grey brick of its host house . The bark was clearly not that of a crab apple.

Finally, Eric Champagne, horticulturist at McGill University identified it simply as an ornamental pear. We’ve yet to pin down the species.

But the pear that had me most confused was the one illustrated here. For years I have walked by this corner, at Berri and Roy streets, past the numerous lindens in the Thérèse Daviau Park, on the other side of Berri, on my way to the fruit store or Caisse Pop. In spring, it is full of white flowers. In summer, a bright, dark, shiny green, the plastic-like finish on the rigid leaves glistening in the sun. Most remarkable, however, was the fact that, in fall, its leaves hang on longer than most other trees and change colour, from green to yellow, to orange, to red – a most spectacular show.

This pear is known as the Chanticleer, Pyrus calleryana Chanteclerc. A native of China and Vietnam, this hardy pear arrived in Europe mid-19^th century when Joseph-Marie Callery, an Italian-French sinologue, sent the first specimens from China. In 1909, the tree imported to  North America for agricultural experimentation. To this day, according to Wikipedia, it is used as rootstock for edible pears, the fruit we recognize as the pear, such as the bosc and nashi.

Only in the 1950s was it used as an ornamental tree, its hardiness in urban conditions, uniformity of shape and three-season beauty, finally recognized. In Montreal, according to Martin Gaudet, foreman of the City’s nursery, the Chanteclerc pear has been planted for the past 10 years, most notably in the St-Michel borough as a sidewalk tree on St-Hubert St., between Faillon and Villeray streets. Since 2008, the nursery has been cultivating the tree for future city plantations.

While Gaudet, lauds the beauty and hardiness of this tree, he cautions that while it may show less bacterial burn on its leaves than its cousin the apple/crabapple, it is still susceptible. As he puts it: “Qui dit rosasé, dit brûlure bactérienne et le poirier n’y échappent pas.”

Still, after at least 15 years, my own beauty on Berri St. still shines, blight-free.