Pears

Pears have been cultivated in China for approximately 3000 years. Pears are consumed fresh, canned, as juice, and dried. Pears will ripen faster if placed next to bananas in a fruit bowl. Pear juice is also known to be the first juice introduced to infants because of its hypoallergenic properties.

Pears can be useful in treating inflammation of mucous membranes, colitis, chronic gallbladder disorders, arthritis, and gout.

Fruit
A pear is an edible pomaceous fruit produced by a tree of genus Pyrus (pear tree). The fruit of the pear is produced on spurs, which appear on shoots more than one year old. The first gathering will come into eating latest, and thus the season of the fruit may be considerably prolonged. Pears grow in the sublime orchard of Alcinous, in Odyssey vii: "Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant, pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit, and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year. nivalis, and their fruit is chiefly used in France in the manufacture of perry (see also cider). Other small-fruited species are frequently used as rootstocks for the cultivated species. [3] Like that of the related apple, the pear fruit is a pome, in most wild species 1–4 cm diameter, but in some cultivated forms up to 18 cm long and 8 cm broad; the shape varies in most species from oblate or globose, to the classic pyriform 'pear-shape' of the European Pear with an elongated basal portion and a bulbous end.