The Pink Pear of Zabudišová

Slovakia's national tree contest has been won only once by a pear, and this pink-fleshed local variety is it. Bošácka ružová grows almost nowhere outside this stretch of the Bošáca countryside. It is a pear whose flesh runs pink rather than white, a curiosity local orchardists have kept going for generations. In 2015 it won the national Strom roka title, then went to the European final and placed third, an unusually strong result for a tree nobody outside its own region had heard of a year earlier. Local tradition holds that it was planted by the area's first settlers, known for making fruit brandy from orchards like this one, though nothing pins that to a date. Two separate outlets covering its 2015 win, pravda.sk and teraz.sk, independently give its age as about two hundred years, which this page repeats with confidence. Nobody has published a reliable girth or height for this specific tree, so those stay open. What is confirmed, from the region's own tourism writing, is a solitary tree on open land near Zabudišová, unfenced and reachable without asking anyone. It stands 350 metres from another national champion, an heirloom apple that won two years later. Two prize-winning fruit trees, in one small corner of western Slovakia, planted for eating rather than for looking at. If you have measured its girth, tell us.