Even if fruit is not abstract, the results are still polymorphic in the test. Would it help if I opened a pull on hibernate-orm to allow easier reproduction? Here's a diff of my hibernate-orm local. The test was run after a gradlew clean at the top of hibernate-orm. I further modified the test to close the initial em before asking for the second (otherwise is the same em).

diff --git a/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/Fruit.java b/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/Fruit.java
index 922f1fd..b9a394d 100644
--- a/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/Fruit.java
+++ b/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/Fruit.java
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ import javax.persistence.InheritanceType;
  */
 @Entity
 @Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.JOINED)
-public abstract class Fruit {
+public class Fruit {
 	Long id;
 
 	@Id
diff --git a/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/InheritanceTest.java b/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/InheritanceTest.java
index 5e8c8a9..3c4cae0 100644
--- a/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/InheritanceTest.java
+++ b/hibernate-entitymanager/src/test/java/org/hibernate/jpa/test/inheritance/InheritanceTest.java
@@ -52,11 +52,20 @@ public class InheritanceTest extends BaseEntityManagerFunctionalTestCase {
         assertNotNull( result1 );
 
         // 2.
-        Strawberry result2 = (Strawberry) firstSession.find(Fruit.class, newId);
-        System.out.println("2. result is:" + result2);
-
+	firstSession.clear();
+        Fruit result2 = firstSession.getReference(Fruit.class, newId);
+        System.out.println("2.(getReference) result is:" + result2);
         firstSession.getTransaction().commit();
-        firstSession.close();
+	firstSession.clear();
+	firstSession.close();
+	EntityManager secondSession = getOrCreateEntityManager( );
+	secondSession.getTransaction().begin();
+	secondSession.clear();
+        Fruit result3 = secondSession.getReference(Fruit.class, newId);
+        System.out.println("3.(getReference) result is:" + result3);
+
+        secondSession.getTransaction().commit();
+        secondSession.close();
 	}
 
 	@Override

results snipped from test report:

2.(getReference) result is:org.hibernate.jpa.test.inheritance.Strawberry@7a04d48b
3.(getReference) result is:org.hibernate.jpa.test.inheritance.Strawberry@7ecb36d4

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