Pyrus spinosa, is a truly wild, hardy, Mediterranean tree, which is common throughout Greece. It is probably a progenitor of the domesticated pear and can be used as root stock for its cultivation. Although the wild pear can mature into a monumental tree, on Skopelos it grows as a shrub or small tree in the macchia amongst other shrubs or in old orchards or olive groves. On first sight it can be mistaken for an almond, especially when not bearing fruit, and was long known as Pyrus amygdalisformis. Theophrastus comments that the wild pear produces more fruit than the common pear but that the fruits ripen less; they are in fact small, hard and quite bitter, and eating them straight from the tree is not recommended.

THEOPHRASTUS, click for more: