Description:

• Deciduous shrubs or trees; often spiny on lower branches or when young; buds with overlapping scales
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire or serrate, rarely lobed, margin often with forward-pointing teeth, inrolled in bud, petiolate; stipules caducous
• Inflorescences umbel-like racemes or corymbose
• Flowers bisexual, appearing with or before leaves
• Calyx: tube turbinate or globose, accrescent; epicalyx absent
• Petals 5, shortly clawed, rounded to broadly oblong, white
• Stamens 15-30; anthers dehiscing outwards, usually red
• Gynoecium of 2-5 carpels, connate to and enclosed within receptacle, walls becoming cartilaginous at maturity; ovules 2 per locule; styles 2-5, free or connate at base
• Fruit a pome, pyriform, turbinate or globose, brownish or greenish, sometimes yellowish or reddish when fully ripe, flesh juicy or woody, with grit cells
• Seeds usually with a cartilaginous testa, black or brownish black
• x = 17 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Pyrus L.
  • Linnaeus: 479 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 214 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 335 (1789)
  • Terpó & Franco: 65 (1968)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 931 (1977)
  • Meikle: 631 (1977)
  • Hedberg: 43 (1989)
  • Knees: 406 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 25 species from Europe to E Asia, south to N Africa
  • Ornamental trees with conspicuous white flowers and colourful autumn foliage
• Southern Africa: Species 1: * Pyrus communis L., an escape from cultivation, the Wild Pear