Asian pears grown in an orchard on Joe Peng's property south of Lawrence. Peng sells to buyers who pick their own pears and then sell at markets like the City Market in Kansas City, MO.

Joe Peng, Lawrence, displays some of the Asian pears grown in his orchard south of Lawrence. Peng and his sister Lucy White are owners of Panda & Plum Garden, 1500 W 6th.

Apples are apples, and pears are pears. But what is a pear that looks like an apple?

An Asian pear – nicknamed the apple pear, of course.

With their smooth golden skin and crisp, juicy taste, they’re a delicate bridge between summer and true pear season, which is just gearing up.

The pears are heavy and rare, something that is still gaining a following in American markets. Most popular in Japan, where many of the 100 or so varieties are grown, they are also grown for commercial production in New Zealand, California, Washington and Oregon.

But Lucy White and her brothers, Joe and Gene Peng, found the pears can grow well in Kansas when they bought their first trees from a grower in St. Louis a decade ago. Now they are big supporters of the pears and believe folks unfamiliar with the fruit are really missing out.

The Peng brothers have full-on orchards, and White has a handful of trees in her front yard. The family, who runs the Panda & Plum Garden, 1500 W. Sixth St., are unabashed pear fans who dole them out to friends, family and employees.

Joe Peng’s orchard includes 300 trees that harvested 10,000 pounds of fruit this year. He doesn’t sell them in stores, just lets friends and folks who learn about him from word-of-mouth come out to the orchard and pick them for a $1 per pound. He doesn’t use pesticides, but the last pears of the season, the Korean-style ones, are pest-free and so large, they’re like softball-sized ornaments weighing down a Christmas tree.

“These are more crispy,” White says, pointing to the Korean-style pears. “(Traditional) Asian pears are not as crispy, but they are more juicy.”

She then reaches up and plucks off two pears and eating them straight away. The crunch nearly scares away the butterflies in the orchard.

“Oh my God, those are wonderful. Oh, those are gorgeous,” she says through bites before pitching the core into the grass that surrounds the orchard, which sits on Peng’s 80 acres of land just south of Lawrence.

Picking the perfect pear

Peng holds up a pear with a greenish hue and one that is a deep bronze. He says you want to pick them when they’ve still got a bit of green to them. White seconds that.

“If you wait until they turn yellow, they get smooshy,” she says, referring to the deep gold color that they turn when they go soft.

If picked or bought hard, according to Aliza Green’s “Field Guide to Produce,” the Asian pear can be stored for up to four weeks in the refrigerator and up to two weeks at room temperature, making them a lasting source of produce.

White takes this description a bit further, saying that though she only has five trees in front of her Lawrence home, she plans to have pears all winter. That’s because some of her pears have been crossed with traditional American Bartlett pears. Because of their breeding, which her brothers learned how to do from the Douglas County Kansas State Research and Extension office, the crossed pears can stay on the tree until November, then stay good in the refrigerator all winter long, she says.

The cross-breeds are even larger than Peng’s softball-sized Korean-style pears. They’re green like the traditional Bartlett, but closer to round like the Asian pear. The mature ones weigh close to a half-pound each, and White has some low-slung limbs propped up with pieces of wood, giving her trees some much-needed support.

Flavorful and healthful

Like the local apple growers who went without fruit last year because of a terrible frost, Peng is pleased to have his fruit back.

“Last year was the first year (without fruit),” he says. “Nobody had them.”

Some days, before going to the Panda and Plum Garden to work, he comes out around 6:30 a.m. and picks pears straight off the tree to eat for breakfast. White, too, champions the pears as the perfect breakfast food, eating two or three herself before heading to the restaurant.

Nutritionally, the pears are more like an apple than a pear, having about half the calories per fruit as an average pear. Per pear, that breaks down to about 50 calories, no fat, 4 grams of fiber and 8 percent of your daily vitamin C.

But health isn’t the only reason why Peng and White think those in Douglas County need to discover the Asian pear. No, for them, it all comes down to the pear’s exotic taste.

“It’s probably 10 times better than the apple,” Peng says. “They’re juicy, crunchy and sweet.”