Shipova / Bollwiller pear (Sorbus × Pyrus)

Survives zone 4 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Sweet, soft pear-like flesh with a hint of rowan — a genuinely good, sought-after rarity.

Hardiness

Zone 4–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Aug–Sept

Mature size

Small tree 4–8 m

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Temperate

Native range

No wild range — an intergeneric hybrid of Sorbus aria and Pyrus communis, known in European gardens since at least the sixteenth century, the 'bollwiller pear'.

Status

Cultivated

Years to fruit

4–6 yrs

Growth speed

Slow to moderate

Spacing

500 cm (197 in) apart — about 25 m² (269 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Intermediate between whitebeam and pear: oval, 6–10 cm, dark green above and grey-downy beneath like a whitebeam, but larger and more pear-like in outline.

Root system

Always the rootstock's, never the tree's own: the hybrid is sterile and is only ever grafted, so what is in the ground is pear or quince. On pear seedling it makes a deep, drought-tough root and a full-sized tree; on quince it stays dwarf and shallow-rooted, needing a stake for life and never going short of water.

Fruit description

A small pear-shaped pome 2–3 cm, yellow flushed red, sweet and pleasant when fully ripe and best used soft — closer to a pear than to a whitebeam berry, and the reason the tree was kept in gardens for four centuries.

Propagation

Grafting onto pear or quince rootstock. As an intergeneric hybrid it is largely sterile and is not raised from seed.

Pollination

Partially self-fertile — better with a pear nearby

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.