Glossary · Orchard
Quince rootstock
Also written Quince A, Quince C. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A dwarfing rootstock used for pears, giving a smaller and earlier-bearing tree than a pear seedling stock. Many perry pear cultivars are incompatible with it and require an interstem or a pear stock.
- Subject
- Orchard
- Also written
- Quince A, Quince C
In more detail
The incompatibility is a practical reason perry pears remained standards long after apples had moved to dwarfing stocks: without a reliable dwarfing option, a perry pear orchard is a large-tree orchard by default.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Rootstock
The root system onto which a fruiting cultivar is grafted. It governs the tree’s eventual size, its speed into bearing, its anchorage and its tolerance of soil conditions, without changing the fruit itself.
Perry
Perry pear
A pear cultivar grown for fermentation rather than for eating, characterised by high tannin, high acid or both, small size, and flesh too hard and astringent for the table.
Orchard
Graft
The joining of a scion to a rootstock so that their cambium layers unite and grow as one tree. It is the only reliable way to reproduce an apple or pear cultivar.
Orchard
Standard
A tree grown on a vigorous rootstock with a clear trunk of about 1.8 to 2.1 metres before the first branch, forming a large canopy that can be grazed or mown beneath.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
Perry Pears
L. C. Luckwill and A. Pollard (eds), published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol, 1963 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25 · covers 1963
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, which records the work as Luckwill, 1963, published for the National Fruit and Cider Institute by the University of Bristol. The catalogue entry names Luckwill alone where the standard citation names Luckwill and Pollard as joint editors; CiderHQ keeps both names and records the discrepancy rather than silently following one catalogue. This is the foundational descriptive work on English perry pears and the ancestor of most later variety lists. No copy was opened: it is sixty years old, out of print, and held in research libraries rather than in open digital collections.