Every once in a while, I like to take the back roads home from work. I never know what I might see on those roads. I’m usually looking for wildlife or wildflowers, but once I even got to watch a group of men herding cattle from one field to another using dogs and horses. There’s also a cattle egret rookery along that route that I like to check for signs of activity (it’s still a bit early yet). The last time I took that route I noticed a couple of pretty trees that were covered in white flowers. I thought they were dogwoods until I stopped. Then I realized they were Asian pears (Pyrus pyrifolia). You may also know them as Nashi pears, Japanese pears, Chinese pears, or Korean pears. As the names imply, they’re not native to this part of the world, but they are sometimes cultivated here. Some folks also use them as decorative trees, which I believe was the original purpose of these trees.

Asian pears are native to northern China and southern Indonesia, but there are many different types, and many of them were developed in other parts of the world. In China, the flowers are considered an early sign of spring and that was actually one of my thoughts when I first saw the trees in bloom (even though at that point I thought they were dogwoods). The flowers are pretty short lived and then take 4-7 months to develop into the delicious fruit they’re known for. These trees require cross pollenating to produce fruit, so there needs to be another tree around. I hadn’t ever really paid much attention to those trees before, but now, I’ll be watching for these to see if they produce any fruit or not.