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Pears are early spring bloomers - they are suppose to bloom a couple of weeks before apples. Well, our apples finished blooming quite a while back. And now in the middle of June I have the two Comice Pears (Pyrus Communis, var. Doyenne du Comice, aka European Pear or Common Pear) blooming. Who has ever heard of pears blooming in the middle of June in Colorado?

I have the D'anjou Pear (Pyrus Communis, var. D'anjou) in the middle flanked on either side by a Comice Pear. Blooming are only the two Comices. I got all three of these pear trees in the early spring of 2006 from Home Depot. The following winter we had lots of snow and the rabbits did their evil deed to trim all three trees down to little stumps. However, all of them resprouted and are now back to almost the size they were when I first planted them more than 3 years ago.

This is the first year that any of these trees bloomed. Since the blooms are all on new growth, are rather small and the pollinator - D'anjou Pear is not blooming, I don't expect that the blooms will develop into fruits. But, if the pears go into bloom this late in the season again next year, I will finally be able to hope for a crop! It would certainly be great to prove wrong the common wisdom that growing pears in Colorado is futile.

Picture taken in the morning of June 16, 2009