Nashi season now

 A nashi ready to pick

My nashi tree fruited well for the first time last month (it's a young tree) and I enjoyed eating lots of this crisp but sweet and juicy fruit, and sharing it with others. I was surprised to find that some of the people I offered it to had never tasted it before, although they had seen it in the supermarket. These people were all recent immigrants to New Zealand, and none of them were from China, Korea or Japan, the evolutionary home of the nashi pear.

The nashi does not look like a European pear. It has a rounded apple shape, and is an even light-brown colour all over when ripe. Its flesh is different too. It does not go soft and smooth like a European pear, but stays crisp and is very juicy. Yet it is definitely in the pear genus. Its proper name is Pyrus pyrifolia, whereas European pears are Pyrus communis. It's easier to see the family relationship in the flowers and leaves of the two species, which are more similar than the fruits.

Nashi trees seem to be easy to grow. They can suffer from the bugs and diseases that European pear trees tend to suffer from, although so far my tree at Port Levy has been very healthy even though it is close to a European pear which is less than perfect. Commercial growers prune the trees into shortish columns or vase shapes to maximise the crop and for ease of picking, but in the home garden if the nashi is only lightly pruned it will grow into its natural spreading shape and be an attractive as well as a productive tree.

The fruit is best eaten fresh straight from the tree. It does not ripen and improve with keeping like European pears, but it can be kept edible in a fridge for up to three months. Nashi pears are a prized fruit in their homelands, and as the Te Ara entry records were first planted commercially in New Zealand in the 1980s in the hopes of developing a big export industry to Asia. This didn't happen, but we can now enjoy a delicious fruit that grows as well here as it does in Asia.