Tusser, states that “Pears of all sorts” were cultivated here in his time.
The Arms of Wardon Abbey, in Bedfordshire, as given by Tanner, are Argent, Three Pears, Or.—Quere, if these are the species called Wardons, or if they are peculiar to that part of England.
The Wardon Pear is common in Yorkshire.]
Plums.—The Romans had a multiplicity of sorts (ingens turba prunorum) black, white, and variegated; one sort was called asinia, from its cheapness; another damascena; this had much stone and little flesh: from Martial’s Epigram, xiii. 29, we may conclude that it was what we now call prunes.
[The Plum is generally supposed to be a native of Asia, and the Damascene (Damson) to take its name from Damascus, a city of Syria.
Tusser enumerates in his list of fruits “Grene or Grass Plums, and Peer Plums, black and yellow.”
Lord Cromwell introduced the Perdrigon Plum in the Reign of Henry the seventh.]
Quinces.—The Romans had three sorts, one was called Chrysomela, from its yellow flesh. They boiled them with honey as we make marmalade. See Martial, xiii. 24.
[The Quince is called Cydonia, from Cydon, a town of Crete, famous for this fruit.—Tusser mentions it among his fruit-trees, and Gerard says it was cultivated here in his time.]
Services.—They had the Apple-shaped, the Pear-shaped, and a small kind, probably the same that we gather wild, the Azarole.