This week it’s:
All gone pear-shaped!
We look at a sweet, juicy fruit grown in the UK
THE humble pear, simple in shape and succulent in nature, originated, we believe, in western China. The first pears were cultivated more than 4,000 years ago. Over millennia, they made their way to Egypt, Greece and Italy. The Romans then brought them to France and Britain. More than 1,000 years later, early British settlers took pear-tree cuttings to the east coast of northern America where, for a few decades, the trees grew and fruited well. But then they were decimated by the dreaded fireblight bacterial disease.
Fortunately, by this time the Spanish had introduced
