Talk:Pear/Archive 1

a description of pear flavor

I think a description of the flavor of pears should be placed at the article actually all of the foods at wikipedia that have an opportunity to have their flavor described might make a truly entertaining wikipedia activity

There are a couple of issues that apply here. One is the Wikipedia policy that original thought isn't published here for the first time (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not). Secondly, flavour is a very individual matter, different people experience flavours so differently that the descriptions would seem wildly wrong for some other people. See this Science Daily article about differences in flavour perception. Nadiatalent (talk) 22:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguity Page?

I've added an article for the PHP Extension and Application Repository which is commonly referred to as PEAR by PHP programmers. Should this page be moved to Pear (fruit) and Pear be made a disambiguity page?

Vic 19:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I added a disambig link to that at the bottom of the page. I don't think this page needs to be moved. Kappa 11:57, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

genus?

Does pear belong to the same genus as apple like it says? ...I thought apple was in the genus malus and pear in pyrus? They're in the same subfamily.

The accepted taxonomy for the past several decades is that apple are Malus and pears are Pyrus. Apples are no longer classified as in the same genus as pears.

Other variations possibly to include

Wild pear: Pyrus bourgeana, (Peral Silvestre in spanish) is offered in the "Campana de Setos" of Medioambiente in Andalucia, 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.111.36.139 (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Pyrus bourgeana is not a recognized primary species. I suspect it is a botanical variety or local variant of P. communis. Go to the GRIN taxonomy web page for authoritative taxonomic information. My personal preference is to be a taxonomic "lumper", i.e. grouping similar local variants under one primary species, rather than a "splitter", i.e. designating minor variations as distinct species. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.213.156 (talk) 01:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Scientific Name

The scientific name for pear is Pyrus communis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.75.220 (talk) 23:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

But Pyrus communis is only one of 23 primary species of pear. Everything in Pyrus is a pear, not just the cultivated European pear, P. communis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.218.233 (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

American pears

Pear pips were sent to Massachusetts Bay from the beginning (1630), but since pears don't come true from seed, all those New World pears with Old World (French usually) names arre just "look-alikes". Is that not true?--Wetman (talk) 04:52, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

What pear cultivars are you referring to? In most cases, I suspect that if it has an "Old world" name, it was brought over as a grafted tree, and would be true-to-type,not a seedling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.216.159 (talk) 21:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Do I surmise correctly that any wild pear in the United States is actually feral? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:346:1180:4320:94F8:2376:F1E5:52E1 (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Pyrus Ranata

In the Siberian Journal of John Ledyard he makes reference to an Apple tree that was cultivated in and around the Town of Irkutsk whose fruit is the size of "a full sized pea in France and England". He states that "It is the true and real apple and their Naturalists distingusih it by the name Pyrus Ranata." I have been unable to find any information about it on Wikipedia or elsewhere.

YOu might look for as Malus ranata, since Malus is the correct genus name for apples. The use of Pyrus for apples has been corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.216.159 (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Bad Cholesterol

Do not all fruits, like, don't have any? Why should pear be mentioned specifically? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.69.107.155 (talk) 21:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Comice

Perhpas someone could add comice to the list of species and say something about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.66.72.13 (talk) 18:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Comice is not a species. It is a cultivar (cultivated variety) of Pyrus communis, and is listed as a major cultivar on the European pear (Pyrus communis) page. The full name is Doyenne du Comice.

Artistic Pear image

I don't think the image adds any encyclopedic value beyond the image used at the beginning of the article. If there is consensus to do so, I'll remove it. Hertzsprung (talk) 22:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• Doesn't hurt, IMO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.245.228 (talk) 03:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

• • I'm okay with removing it completely. There are far too many self-titled "artistic" photos on Wikipedia that are not as artistic as they seem. --KP Botany (talk) 05:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

• • • Fine then as far as I'm concerned... I don't feel massively strongly that it should stay. 86.133.240.160 (talk) 05:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Health benefits

This section is a potential magnet for fringe and pseudo-scientific claims, and the sources need to be rock solid. I've tagged several statements as needing individual sourcing as it's not clear that the source at the end applies to them all. 86.133.245.228 (talk) 03:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. I see. I thought just adding a {{references}} tag at the top would be better than 4 individual tags, but that particular tag says the whole section is unreferenced--and it's not, just mostly unreferenced. Thanks. --KP Botany (talk) 05:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Top ten producers

The production figures table is headed "Top ten pear producers — 11 June 2008". What is the significance of such a specific date? These are annual figures I presume? 86.161.43.69 (talk) 01:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC).

Etymology.

Can someone put a citation as to either support or oppose the notion that the word "pirum/pira fr. Gk apion, apisos" comes from a Semitic Language source like Phoenician? As it stands such claims cannot be made without citations. Thankyou. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.165.25.37 (talk) 04:37, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I second this. No Latin or Greek etymological dictionaries I have referenced so far mention this link. Nor is the r expected to be lost in Greek. Rather, Latin r in pirum is likely the result of s via rhotacism, which would also be lost in Greek intervocalically. If there is agreement on this, I will change the text and add the relevant citations. Kavindad1 (talk) 13:55, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Herbalism?

The Herbalism section contains a vague statement about pears being used to treat nausea with no cited sources. Can anyone find a source? If not, then I don't see the purpose of the heading all together.

Ozkwa (talk) 17:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the herbalism section. No need to have a separate section for one unsourced statement. Plantdrew (talk) 23:22, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Smoking Pear Leaves?

The last line of the "uses" section claims that pear leaves were smoked in Europe prior to the introduction of Tobacco, but I can find no sources corroborating this outside of the two cited in the article. Furthermore, the specific claim that these two sources make is that the ancient Greeks and Romans smoked pear and eucalyptus leaves in pipes, which seems highly improbable as, at the time, Eucalyptus trees were found only in Australia and island southeast Asia, and once more I can find no additional sources mentioning pipe smoking in the classical world.

A Google search shows that this claim has been repeated on numerous websites without citation, and I suspect that this article is its source, as the sources cited here appear to be fairly obscure French-language web pages.CatDoom (talk) 01:23, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this claim seems pretty dubious. Removed. Plantdrew (talk) 03:45, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Cultivation paragraph

The paragraph regarding rootstocks could use some revision. The rootstocks mentioned are mostly about ornamental trees, and it lacks information regarding rootstocks for fruiting trees. I'd like to revise to address this section and add information regarding low chill varieties. Your thoughts are welcome.Horst59 (talk) 00:47, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Propagation

• "Can the same tree be grown from Asian pear seeds?

Or are they like apples and it is a crap shoot?"

"Asian pears have to be cross pollinated so you never know what you'll get if you grow them from seed..."

"The seed of pear cultivars will not usually breed true to type."

"pears are highly heterozygous, and therefore do not breed true from seed"

Please add info to the article about propagation, particularly from seed.-71.174.185.30 (talk) 21:46, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Image positioning

It is not an improvement to bunch all of the images up at the top of the article, all at the right side. This is the least balanced, having nothing on the left and in lower sections. I do not understand why you would not put the blossoms in the section with the flower description, the cooked pears in the uses section, the nutrition facts in the nutrition section, and so on. Per MOS:LAYIM, "Images should ideally be spread evenly within the article, and relevant to the sections they are located in", so the current layout is not acceptable. Perhaps the sections could be reordered if your issue is the large tables extending lower down, but I do not know what you mean by being balanced in this case. Reywas92^Talk 21:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I guess we could debate whether left images give balance or disturb the flow of text. In a short article like this, I think they break the text undesirably on non-PC devices; see MOS:SANDWICHING, and the images as organized are easy to view as you read, except possibly the last two that could be put in a gallery (both have low importance, imo). There are numerous Commons images on pears, so a link there could be used. --Zefr (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I think the History, Description, and Uses section are long enough to have left-aligned images that do not sandwich with right-aligned, while the others would have them flow into the header of the next section. I would agree that the simmered pears and especially Eau de vie images are unnecessary. I think the cultivation map should also be removed, as it falsely implies the location of where they're farmed (e.g. the map has dots in the New York area but they're mainly grown on the west coast) and the dot scale is not proportionate. Without those, there is plenty of space to put all tables and images in the relevant sections, even with them mainly right-aligned. The sections could also be reordered, such as in apple. Reywas92^Talk 18:24, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

See this edit; I don't see major issues with the article as it is, but you may wish to try image rearrangement and topic order. Editors can collaborate for the best outcome. --Zefr (talk) 20:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Pear tree vs pear fruit

I have only heard the word "pear" refer to the fruit and "pear tree" to the the tree (the same goes for apple). Is this some American usage I've not heard before? Can we change the first sentence to be more like the article on apple? Volunteer1234 (talk) 19:12, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

October?

I note that the first line of this article refers to October seemingly coming after Summer rather than before. This directly opposes the first words in the same sentence, which describe the pear as cultivated 'around the world'. I know that in some places Summer is in the middle of the year (imagine!) but it certainly isn't 'around the world'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.242.135.247 (talk) 04:28, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

To add to article

To add to this article: which acids do pears have? Malic acid, citric acid, and quinic acid? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 07:58, 17 April 2021 (UTC)