Vereins Dechantsbirne. 14. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 293. 1889. 15. Gaucher Pom. Prak. Obst. No. 68, Pl. 36. 1894. 16. Deut. Obstsorten 5: Pt. 14, Pl. 1909.
This pear has been esteemed long and justly for the beauty and high quality of its fruits. If its tree-characters were better the variety would take high place in commercial orcharding as well as for the home orchard, to which it is now almost wholly confined. The fruits are very large, smooth except for russet markings, clear handsome yellow at maturity, sometimes brightened by a delicate blush, with yellow, fine-grained flesh which is tender, melting, very juicy, sweet, piquant, perfumed. The quality is so good that the fruits of this variety are called by many the best of all pears. The list of faults for the trees is as long as the list of merits for the fruits. The young trees make a poor growth in the nursery; young or old, the trees must be humored in soil, climate, and care; they are subject to blight; while usually productive, they are not always so even where vigorous, healthy, and hardy; lastly, they are a little below the average in hardihood to cold. The variety is seldom at home in New York, but where it thrives, as on the Pacific slope, it is a valuable commercial pear, and is always worthy a place in the home orchard or in the collection of the pear-fancier. In Europe, it is reported as doing especially well on the quince.
The parent tree of Doyenné du Comice was taken from the first seed bed made in the fruit-garden of the Comice Horticole, Angers, Department of Maine-et-Loire, France. In November, 1849, it produced its first fruit, which was at once so highly esteemed that it was named Doyenné du Comice. It was placed on the market with unusual promptitude and rapidly distributed in foreign lands, reaching America about 1850. The variety was recommended for general cultivation by the American Pomological Society in 1862.
Tree vigorous, characteristically upright, dense, usually productive; branches smooth, dull gray mingled with greenish-brown, marked with large lenticels; branchlets long, brown tinged with red, glabrous, with many small, slightly raised, conspicuous lenticels.
Leaf-buds large, medium to long, conical, pointed, nearly free; leaf-scars prominent. Leaves 3¼ in. long, 1½ in. wide, oval, leathery; margin finely serrate; petiole 2 in. long. Flower-buds short, conical, free; blossoms open late; flowers 1¼ in. across, in dense clusters, about 8 buds in a cluster; pedicels ⅞ in. long, slender, pubescent, light green.
Fruit ripe in late October and November; large, 3 in. long, 2¾ in. wide, obovate-obtuse-pyriform or roundish, with unequal sides; stem 1¼ in. long, very thick, usually curved; cavity obtuse, shallow, narrow, russeted and wrinkled, often with a fleshy ring around the base of the stem; calyx open; lobes separated at the base, long, narrow, acuminate; basin medium to wide, obtuse, often furrowed; skin tough and granular, smooth except for the russet markings, dull; color clear yellow, often with a very faint russet-red blush on the exposed cheek, the surface heavily covered with large patches and nettings of attractive russet; dots many, very small, dark brown, obscure; flesh tinged strongly with yellow, fine-grained near the outside but granular toward the core, melting, tender, buttery, very juicy, sweet and vinous, aromatic; quality very good to best. Core closed, with clasping core-lines; calyx-tube short, wide, conical; seeds large, wide, long, rather plump, acute, often abortive.
