JOSÉPHINE DE MALINES
1. McIntosh Bk. Gard. 2:461. 1855. 2. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 68. 1862. 3. Pom. France 2: No. 50, Pl. 50. 1864. 4. Jour. Hort. N. S. 14:67. 1868. 5. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 793, fig. 1869. 6. Leroy Dict. Pom. 2:310, fig. 1869. 7. Guide Prat. 61, 282. 1876. 8. Jour. Hort. 3rd Ser. 5:565, fig. 96. 1882. 9. Hogg Fruit Man. 599. 1884. 10. Bunyard Handb. Hardy Fr. 182. 1920.
Joséphine von Mecheln. 11. Dochnahl Führ. Obstkunde 2:93. 1856. 12. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 239. 1889. 13. Gaucher Pom. Prak. Obst. No. 50, Pl. 31. 1894.
Malines. 14. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 24. 1897.
This is another of the few good winter pears. The fruit-characters are so distinctive and meritorious that the variety should be grown in every home orchard, and it possesses much merit for commercial plantations. The fruits have a marked peculiarity. Cut through the shaded yellow-russet skin, flesh with a faint, rosy tint is displayed. Several red or rosy-fleshed pears are grown in Europe, but this is the only one described by American pomologists. The tree also, has a marked peculiarity; it thrives amazingly well on the white-thorn as well as on pear and quince stocks. But it is the quality of the fruits that commends the variety most highly. The flesh is buttery, juicy, sweet, and perfumed—pleasing in every character that gratifies the palate. The season is exceedingly variable, and is given by different pomologists from December to March and January to May. The fruits are not very pleasing in appearance, but the accompanying illustration scarcely does them justice in either size or color. In the orchard, the trees are satisfactory, but the nurserymen find them rather difficult to grow, this, no doubt, being the chief reason for the apparent neglect of this splendid pear. The trees thrive in almost any soil or situation suitable to pears, and are everywhere prodigiously fruitful, hardy, and resistant to blight. The variety deserves wider recognition than it now receives.
This pear originated about 1830 in the seed beds of Major Espéren, the well-known pomologist of Mechlin (Malines), Belgium, who named it Joséphine de Malines in honor of his wife. It was introduced in America prior to 1850, and in 1862 was added to the fruit-list of the American Pomological Society, a place it has since retained.
Tree large, vigorous, spreading, tall, dense-topped, rapid-growing, hardy, very productive; trunk stocky; branches thick, shaggy, reddish-brown overlaid with gray scarf-skin, marked with few lenticels; branchlets thick, dull reddish-brown, smooth, glabrous, with small, raised, inconspicuous lenticels.