Fireblight-Resistant Pear Varieties

Fireblight is the disease that decides where pears can be grown. A bacterium (Erwinia amylovora) that enters through blossoms in warm, wet spring weather, it blackens shoots into the signature "shepherd's crook," and in a susceptible variety runs down the limb into the trunk and kills the tree. There is no cure — east of the Rockies and throughout the humid South, variety resistance isn't a nice-to-have, it's the whole ballgame. (Bartlett, the supermarket standard, is among the most susceptible trees you can plant there.)

These 13 varieties carry documented resistance, from old survivors like Kieffer and Seckel through purpose-bred lines — Moonglow and the Harrow series — to the Southern workhorses Orient, Pineapple and Warren. Resistance is strongest when you help it: don't over-fertilize with nitrogen (lush growth is blight fuel), and prune strikes 8–12 inches below visible damage in dry weather. Sorted A–Z; the disease column quotes each variety's actual rating.