Golden Spice pear

Golden Spice pears are famously spicy-sweet and aromatic, and are often on the small side for a pear (which makes a great snack, in my opinion). Fruits ripen in mid-late September, and are excellent eaten fresh, canned, pressed into cider, and used in other preserves.

Golden Spice is very cold hardy – able to grow in zone 4, and said to be highly tolerant to urban pollution and the stresses of being a pear tree in a city. A Montana State University fruit tree research program found it to be their best performing pear cultivar.

Disease resistance:

Very resistant to fire blight, a common disease of pome fruits.

Parentage:

Bred at the University of Minnesota, with unknown parentage, and released to the public in 1949.

Rootstock:

OHxF 333. A semi-dwarf rootstock for pears. Confers some resistance to fire blight and is hardy to zone 4.

References:

The Best Pear Cultivars for North Dakota.

Montana State University Fruit Research Sites.

100 Years of Fruit Crops Breeding at the University of Minnesota.

Image 1: Hans Benn via Pixabay

Image 2: DNA Gardens.