Dame de Beauté. Pyrus communis 'Le Curé', European Pear, World Horticultural Expo 2012, Venlo, The Netherlands

            The Floriade 2012, the World Horticultural Expo, has just opened, this time near Venlo on the Meuse River, Limburg, The Netherlands. The Expo is organised once every ten years in The Netherlands, and there is a great deal of competition between cities to host it. Venlo is very proud of having been selected, and the town has worked hard over the last five years to make a really enormous world horticultural park (it covers about 165 acres!). It is mind-bogglingly big and diverse and wonderful and colorful and educational and fun and healthy and much more. So I've taken a season's ticket (the Expo's open until the beginning of October) because one visit can hardly do it justice. Maybe one should just go and live in the park!
So there I was this afternoon admiring its wealth of natural beauty in the Pouring Sun. So much to see and admire and to photograph. I spent a lot of time in the just blossoming orchards...
Here's the blossom of Pyrus communis, 'Le Curé', the common European Pear. There's a lovely story of how it was 'discovered'. It seems that the local curate of Villiers-en-Brenne in central France, one M. Leroy, enjoyed walking in the forest of Fromenteau. One day ca. 1760 he saw this Pear tree in that forest.  He made a graft of a twig from it onto one of the trees in his garden; everyone was much taken by its delicious fruit. From this graft descend all the trees of this pear kind we know today.
The chateau to which that forest belonged has long since been torn down. But it is said that here once lived beautiful and notorious Agnès Sorel (1422-1450), the famous mistress of King Charles VII of France. She's been depicted on many wonderful late-medieval paintings in various stages of dress and undress. She's even posed in an amazing Virgin-and-Child painting by Jean Fouquet. In her times, Agnès was known as the 'Dame de Beauté'. For me this afternoon, though, the Beauty is in the Pear...
   

Taken in: Nederland / Limburg / Venlo (show map)

Taken on: April 6, 2012

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Agnès Sorel

King Charles VII of France

Floriade 2012

World Horticultural Exp, Venlo, The Netherlands

Pyrus communis, Le Curé

Villiers-en-Brenne, France

Fromenteau, France

M. Leroy

Jenn Fouquet

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Camera: Sony DSC-TX100V, f/6.3, 1/500 sec, 4.4mm, ISO 125 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony DSC-TX100V
Aperture:	f/6.3
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	4.4mm
ISO:	125
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
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