Has anyone ever seen one before? I grew some pear seedlings few months back but one of the 10 remained purple throughout the year ( This is about nine months old ) I actually plucked all the leaves off last months ( no idea why ) and these grew back
Are all of the seedlings of the same variety? Were both the original and replacement leaves purple, or only the new ones? Looks healthy to me. Why not just let it grow and await developments?
I have not heard of a purple leaved pear. It will interesting to see if it maintains the purple colour as it matures. The plant is very young--may be a juvenile effect. I would keep it and grow on to see what happens.
Hi! I realize it has been a while since you posted your question, but here is an answer. I don't think there are very many red leafed pears trees around, but they do exist. I know for a fact, because I have been growing lots of pear seedlings in the past year, over a hundred, from different commercial pears: bosc, anjou, red anjou, comice, starkrimson, seckel. Most of the seedling I have been growing turned out regular green except for the seedlings of some red pears, that did grow with purple/reddish tones of leaves. Surprisingly, I grew seedlings of two different red pears, both "sports" of ordinary pears; they were red anjou (sport or mutation of a regular anjou) and red clapp's favorite (starkrimson). All of the strakrimson seedlings turned out green. I still might found out one day that the pears those tree produce are red though! The red Anjou seedlings on the other hand, turned out mostly red/purple, from dark to lighter shade of red or plain green. I read in an article about red mutant pears that there are "levels" of redness in a pear, gradations, starting from leaves/shoots, flowers, fruits all the way to red flesh being the most concentration of pigmentation. The same occurs in apples as well (having red colored leaf offspring), since it happened to my crabs seedlings. Although in apples (especially crabs), the red colour gene seems to turn out more randomly. Here is the link to an abstract of the article:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00022189#page-1 It might be that red leaved pears are not popular because most red-skin pears cultivars or sports (aside from being good-looking) are generally poor tasting versions of their green/yellow counteparts. But regardless of that, I am still hoping that one of my seedlings will be cold hardy enough to be grown in northern Quebec, in zone 4. That is, with or without producing great tasting pears. I will settle for an OK tasting pear as long as my tree survives! :) To be continued... NB: I added a picture of some of my Red Anjou seedlings
Hey, sorry for a verry late Replay :) I Saw your Beautiful Purple leafed öar plants, 11 years ago. How do they look like now?, and is it possible to but a graft. I have been looking for a Purple leafed Peter tree Long time, but cant find annywhere, so I got suprised to se it here!! Best wiches. //John :)
