Very resistant to fire blight, hard wood, adaptable to poor soils including clay, most wild specimens have long thorns. Source of food fo...Read Morer wildlife. Branching angles are variable between specimens but most of the ones near me have great wide angles.
For cultivated specimens it is essential that the trees are properly pruned early in life to prevent splitting as they grow older, they should be trained with a central leader system, only allowing one branch at any particular height along the trunk, otherwise there is too much strain on the main trunk as the branches get thicker and you end up with splitting. When properly pruned as a young tree they can certainly surpass the typical lifespan of a poorly maintained tree of the same species.
I concluded that this tree is an inferior ornamental long before I found out that it's also commonly invasive.
The lifespa...Read Moren of a callery pear is typically 10-15 years, with luck perhaps 20. (Dirr) I can't count the number of callery pears I've seen split and disintegrate before reaching maturity, because the tree's architecture can't support its own weight, especially in windy, snowy, or icy weather. Since 'Bradford', many cultivars have been released which are claimed to have stronger architecture, but they all have this propensity to splitting, and in the landscape I still see few surviving into maturity.
The flowers are pretty and very early, but they have a powerful pervasive stink.
The foliage is attractive and rarely troubled by disease. Fall color is generally good. But these merits don't begin to make up for the short lifespan.
This tree is tremendously overplanted. Given the variety of beautiful flowering trees that are available, why not choose something with more character and a longer life?
Some cultivars are self-sterile, but they all produce copious viable seeds (bird-dispersed) when they can cross-pollinate with another cultivar, or with root suckers when they're grafted, as they almost always are. The offspring are usually spiny and have become destructive of natural habitat in the eastern, midwestern, and southern US, according to the US National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service:
The wild form of the familiar Bradford pear. Birds relish the tiny pears and spread it far and wide. Bradford stock eventually reverts ba...Read Moreck to this type. This species is naturalized and abundant in north Alabama. Since it lacks the narrow branch crotch angles of the Bradford, it makes a better shade tree. The crown is rounded to spreading in older specimens.
Very resistant to fire blight, hard wood, adaptable to poor soils including clay, most wild specimens have long thorns. Source of food fo...Read More
I concluded that this tree is an inferior ornamental long before I found out that it's also commonly invasive.
The lifespa...Read More
The wild form of the familiar Bradford pear. Birds relish the tiny pears and spread it far and wide. Bradford stock eventually reverts ba...Read More