Most of Gloucestershire’s traditional orchards are a mix of apples, pears and some plums – and this becomes particularly obvious, some distance away, at flowering time with the pears flowering first.
We can’t get out much at the moment because of the coronavirus restrictions but here are a few pictures (slideshow below) of the orchard at Standish Court, just south of Gloucester, taken yesterday and showing how the pear blossom picks out the pears from the apples.
In this particular orchard the contrast is heightened by the abundance of mistletoe – which grows readily on apple trees but rarely on pears. So the apples are covered in mistletoe, the pears are covered in blossom.
Note too that there have been some recent losses – trees blown over – and that this may well be due, at least in part, to too much mistletoe.
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