Winter Nelis is the standard winter pear in the United States. Both fruits and trees possess several serious faults, but these are outmatched by virtues which make the variety preëminent in its season. The fruits are small and are often so poorly colored as to be unattractive, but well grown they are sufficiently large for dessert fruits and are very handsome in a much-russeted coat and a ruddy cheek. Flesh and flavor are the chief assets of the fruits. The flesh is tender, melting, juicy, luscious, with a rich, sweet, aromatic flavor—one of the most delectable of all pears. The fruits keep, ship, and sell well. The season is from Christmas to March, but the pears can be kept until late spring in cold-storage. The trees begin badly, for no variety is more difficult to grow well in the nursery. They thrive only on standard stocks, refusing to do well on the quince unless double worked. In the orchard, the trees are among the unmanageables. They are small or of but medium size, with straggling, wayward tops with habits of growth so self assertive that no art nor skill of the pruner can bring the branches under control. The limbs are always crooked; some bend inward toward the main stem, some are upright, some droop, and no two behave in quite the same way. Notwithstanding the illy-shaped tops, the trees are often enormously productive so that the crop usually requires thinning. They bear almost annually; come in bearing young; are fairly hardy; and are adapted to almost any soil or situation provided, only, that the soil is fertile or well fertilized. They are as nearly immune to blight as those of any other European pear. The trees are characterized by two marked peculiarities: the old wood is thickly set with small, short spurs; and they are about the latest of all their kind in leafing out in the spring. There is no better winter pear for either the commercial pear-grower or the amateur, and the variety grows especially well in New York.
Winter Nelis was raised from seed by Jean Charles Nélis, Mechlin, Belgium, early in the nineteenth century. It was introduced into England by the London Horticultural Society under the name La Bonne Malinoise. Subsequently this name was cancelled and that of Winter Nelis adopted, the name which had been given the variety by Van Mons in honor of the originator. In 1823, Thomas Andrew Knight, President of the London Horticultural Society, sent cions of the variety to John Lowell, Roxbury, Massachusetts, who, in his turn, shared them with Robert Manning, Salem, Massachusetts, whence the sort was very generally disseminated in this country and attained great popularity. At the National Convention of Fruit-Growers held in New York in 1848, Winter Nelis was included in a short list of pears recommended for general cultivation. For more than half a century the name has appeared in the fruit-catalogs of the American Pomological Society.
Tree medium in size and vigor, spreading, hardy, very productive; trunk stocky; branches thick, zigzag, reddish-brown mingled with gray scarf-skin, marked with small lenticels; branchlets with short internodes, reddish-brown, dull, smooth, glabrous, with numerous raised, conspicuous lenticels.
Leaf-buds medium to large, long, conical or pointed, free. Leaves 3 in. long, 1⅛ in. wide, elongated-oval, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin varies from crenate to serrate; petiole 1½ in. long, slender. Flower-buds conical or pointed, free; flowers open late, 1¾ in. across, 6 or 7 buds in a cluster; pedicels ⅞ in. long, rather slender, lightly pubescent, greenish.
Fruit ripe late November to early January; medium in size, 2¼ in. long, about 2¼ in. wide, uniform in size and shape, roundish-obovate to obtuse-obovate-pyriform, quite symmetrical except for the unequal sides; stem 1⅜ in. long, thick, curved; cavity obtuse, shallow, narrow, russeted, gently furrowed, occasionally lipped; calyx large, open; lobes separated at the base, short, broad, acute; basin shallow, obtuse, lightly furrowed, symmetrical; skin thick, tender, roughened with much russet, dull; color yellow with a tinge of green, dotted with grayish-russet and with many russet streaks and patches on the exposed cheek which is usually blushed with bright red; dots numerous, small, russet, conspicuous; flesh yellowish-white, quite granular at the center and underneath the skin, tender and melting, buttery, very juicy, sweet, aromatic; quality very good. Core large, closed, axile, with clasping core-lines; calyx-tube short, wide, conical; seeds large, wide, long, plump, acute.
WORDEN SECKEL
1. Rural N. Y. 50:888, figs. 326 and 327. 1891. 2. Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 465, fig. 675. 1897. 3. Franklin Davis Nur. Cat. 23. 1901. 4. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 2:268. 1903. 5. Banker Cat. 19. 1915.
Worden. 6. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 41. 1909.