URBANISTE
1. Trans. Lond. Hort. Soc. 5:411. 1824. 2. Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 384. 1831. 3. Kenrick Am. Orch. 186. 1832. 4. Mag. Hort. 10:131, fig. 1844. 5. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 417, fig. 190. 1845. 6. Gard. Chron. 68, fig. 1847. 7. Hovey Fr. Am. 2:21, Pl. 1851. 8. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 53. 1852. 9. Pom. France. 1: No. 32, Pl. 32. 1863. 10. Mas Le Verger 3: Pt. 1, 193, fig. 95. 1866-73. 11. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 871, fig. 1869. 12. Guide Prat. 59, 308. 1876. 13. Hogg Fruit Man. 657. 1884.
Urbanister Sämling. 14. Dochnahl Führ. Obstkunde 2:116. 1856.
Poire des Urbanistes. 15. Leroy Dict. Pom. 2:712, fig. 1869.
Coloma’s Herbst Butterbirne. 16. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 197. 1889. 17. Lucas Tafelbirnen 109, fig. 1894.
Urbaniste is another variety desirable for home use because of its highly-flavored fruits—so sweet, rich, perfumed, and luscious as to be a natural sweetmeat. The fruits are of but medium size and not particularly handsome, but the taste excels the looks. The flesh is as tender, sweet, juicy, and as delicately perfumed as that of Seckel or White Doyenné, but with a distinct flavor and scent which give the fruits the added charm of individuality. The crop ripens in October, in a season when there are many other pears, but the fruits stand comparison with those of any other variety and are welcome additions to the fruit-basket. The trees have several defects, chief of which is tardiness in coming in bearing, to remedy which grafting on the quince is recommended. They are also susceptible to blight, and are not as hardy as might be wished. Of all pears, the tree of this variety is one of the handsomest—clean and tidy, slender and graceful, yet robust and productive. Fruit and tree make this a valuable variety for home plantings.
Urbaniste originated as a wilding in the gardens of the religious order of Urbanistes, Mechlin, Belgium. After the suppression of this order in 1783, their gardens remained uncultivated for some time and produced new seedlings of considerable merit. The beauty of one of these attracted the attention of Count de Coloma, a well-known pomologist, who acquired this property in 1786, and in due course propagated and disseminated the variety under the name Urbaniste. Early in the nineteenth century, Count de Coloma sent specimens of the pear to the London Horticultural Society, which organization afterwards distributed it in England about 1823. Thomas Andrew Knight sent cions to John Lowell, Roxbury, Massachusetts, through whom it became disseminated in the United States. The American Pomological Society added Urbaniste to its fruit-catalog list in 1852.
Tree medium in size, vigorous, upright-spreading, slow-growing, productive with age; trunk slender, shaggy; branches stocky, shaggy, zigzag, reddish-brown, overspread with gray scarf-skin, sprinkled with numerous lenticels; branchlets long, reddish-brown mingled with grayish scarf-skin, smooth, zigzag, glabrous, marked with conspicuous, raised lenticels.
Leaf-buds large, obtuse, semi-free. Leaves 2¼ in. long, ⅞ in. wide, thin, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin finely serrate; petiole 1½ in. long, slender. Flower-buds short, variable in shape, free.
Fruit ripe in late October and early November; medium in size, 2⅜ in. long, 2 in. wide, obovate-obtuse-pyriform, with unequal sides; stem ⅝ in. long, short, thick; cavity obtuse, shallow, narrow, faintly russeted, furrowed, slightly lipped; calyx open; lobes separated at the base, narrow, obtuse; basin shallow, narrow, obtuse, slightly furrowed; skin thick, tough, roughened by the russet nettings, dull; color pale yellow, often with a faint russet-red blush on the exposed cheek and marked with nettings and patches of russet; dots numerous, small, russet, conspicuous; flesh tinged with yellow, granular especially around the core, tender and melting, buttery, juicy, sweet, pleasantly aromatic; quality very good. Core closed, with clasping core-lines; calyx-tube short, wide, conical; seeds medium in size and width, long, plump, acute.
