• By C.J. FUTCH
• Advocate Ascension Section writer
• Published: Jul 29, 2010

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ST. AMANT — The late Charles E. Perdue Jr. had a good feeling about one particular pear tree on his farm in Rosedale, where, according to his son, Charles Perdue III, he spent much of his spare time experimenting with fruit trees.

“He was an avid gardener. He tested every type of fruit tree he could grow. Apples, pears, peaches — he even tried to grow kiwis before anybody around here had ever heard of them,” Perdue III said.

His dad’s end goal, it seemed, was to find the perfect fruits for south Louisiana, a quest that took considerable patience.

He paid attention to which trees had certain characteristics — tolerance to the heat and humidity, disease resistance. Once he’d selected those varieties, he then had to wait years to see what kind of fruit it would produce, how often and how much.

When Perdue Jr. sold the farm 30 years ago and moved his family to St. Amant, it was with one caveat — that he be allowed to come back in the fall and transplant a particular pear tree.

To this day, the family isn’t sure what made Perdue Jr. pick that tree, as it hadn’t yet produced any pears.

“I guess he just had a hunch it would be a good mix (of characteristics),” Perdue III said.

He turned out to be right.

The fruit from this tree, which the family calls the Perdue Pear, started producing fruit that year, and has produced a smooth-textured, sweet pear in abundance for 29 of the last 30 years in their St. Amant back yard.

“It’s not a Barlett. Bartletts are the gold standard for pears,” said Jimmy Boudreaux, a professor with LSU’s Department of Plant, Environmental and Soil Sciences. “But (the Perdue Pear fruits) have very few grit cells, and (the tree) is disease resistant. For the south, it’s a good tree.” Grit cells, Boudreaux said, are what produce the gritty feel some pears have.

Perdue turned out to be right on a lot of points about this tree. It has never fallen prey to blights — a disease that plagues many pear trees in the southeastern U.S. — and the angle of its limbs to the tree trunk are wide.

That becomes important as the limbs start to bear weight, either of an ice storm, or of fruit. Many pear trees have very narrow limb angles, making them susceptible to splitting off the tree when weight is added.

Randel “Panco” Badeaux, who married into the family, started calling LSU in about 2004, trying to get someone to take a look at the pears, and tell them if they had anything special in the tree.