POUND
1. Coxe Cult. Fr. Trees 209, fig. 63. 1817. 2. Prince Pom. Man. 1:149. 1831. 3. Kenrick Am. Orch. 151. 1832. 4. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 445. 1845. 5. Ibid. 835. 1869. 6. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 22. 1871. 7. Wickson Cal. Fruits 326, 338, 344. 1889.
Pickering. 8. Langley Pomona 133, Pl. 71, fig. 1. 1729.
Union. 9. Miller Gard. Kal. 31, 54. 1734. 10. Miller Gard. Dict. 2: Pt. 1. 1807.
Uvedale’s St. Germain. 11. Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 413. 1831. 12. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 70. 1862. 13. Hogg Fruit Man. 657. 1884. 14. Jour. Hort. 3rd Ser. 13:465. 1886. 15. Bunyard Handb. Hardy Fr. 202. 1920.
Bruderbirne. 16. Dochnahl Führ. Obstkunde 2:148. 1856.
Winter Bell. 17. Watson Am. Home Gard. 404, fig. 264. 1859.
Belle Angevine. 18. Gard. Chron. 979. 1860. 19. Mas Le Verger 1:31 bis, fig. 22. 1866-73. 20. Gard. Chron. 138. 1869. 21. Guide Prat. 61, 233. 1876.
Schöne Angevine. 22. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 279. 1889.
Pound is grown in collections for its monstrous fruits, which have few virtues other than large size. The pears not infrequently weigh three pounds, and one is noted in the next paragraph weighing four pounds, nine ounces. The pears are coarse in form, texture and flavor—but one degree better in flavor than the potato-like fruits of Kieffer and even more sappy. The pears keep well and are said to be fairly good for culinary purposes. The trees are unusually satisfactory, because of which the variety should make a good parent from which to breed.
The name “Pound” has been applied to a number of varieties, notably Black Worcester, Angora, Verulam, and others. The variety now known as Pound in America is more generally known in Europe as Belle Angevine or Uvedale’s St. Germain. This sort appears to have been raised by a Dr. Uvedale, who was a schoolmaster at Eltham, England, in 1690. Miller in his Dictionary, in 1724, speaks of him as a Dr. Udal of Enfield, “a curious collector and introducer of many rare exotics, plants and flowers,” and Bradley, in 1733, speaks of the pear as “Dr. Udale’s great pear, called by some the Union pear.” William Robert Prince mentions the Pound pear in 1831 saying that “it often weighs from twenty-five to thirty ounces, and one was exhibited in New Jersey about four years since, weighing forty and a half ounces.” In 1870, according to Wickson, a Pound pear sent from Sacramento to the late Marshall P. Wilder, President of the American Pomological Society, weighed four pounds and nine ounces. In 1862, the American Pomological Society added this variety to its fruit-catalog under the name Uvedale’s St. Germain, but in 1871 changed the name to Pound. The name continued to appear in the Society’s catalogs until 1909 when it was dropped.
Tree medium in size, upright, dense-topped, hardy, very productive; trunk stocky, shaggy; branches thick, shaggy, zigzag, dull reddish-brown, heavily covered with gray scarf-skin, marked with many large lenticels; branchlets short, with short internodes, brownish-red, mottled with gray scarf-skin, smooth, glabrous, with few small, elongated lenticels.
Leaf-buds large, long, conical or pointed, plump, free; leaf-scars prominent. Leaves 4¼ in. long, 3¾ in. wide, ovate, thin, stiff; apex taper-pointed; margin glandular, finely serrate; petiole 1¾ in. long, slender. Flower-buds large, long, conical or pointed, very plump, free, usually singly on short spurs; flowers open early, 1⅜ in. across, large, well distributed, average 7 buds in a cluster; pedicels 1½ in. long, pubescent, pale green.
Fruit matures in February; large, 4 in. long, 2⅞ in. wide, uniform in size and shape, obovate-acute-pyriform, with unequal sides; stem long, thick, curved; cavity obtuse, very shallow, narrow, russeted, furrowed, drawn up in a fleshy ring about the stem; calyx large, open; lobes separated at the base, obtuse; basin shallow, narrow, obtuse, slightly furrowed, symmetrical; skin thick, tough, with patches of russet, dull, roughened by the dots and by the russet markings; color golden-yellow, often marked on the exposed cheek with a bronze or pinkish blush; dots numerous, russet, very conspicuous; flesh yellowish, firm, granular, very tough, subacid, inferior in flavor; quality very poor. Core large, closed, axile, with meeting core-lines; calyx-tube short, wide, conical; carpels pear-shaped; seeds very large, brownish-black, wide, long, acuminate.
