Callery Pear (Pyrus calleryana) in the Pears Database

Introduced into the US in the early 1900s to help with efforts to develop fire blight resistance in the common pear. Callery Pear is invasive in many areas and shouldn't be planted.

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If Callery Pear did not become so invasive into the wild in eastern North America, I would promote it for parking lot islands and similar tough urban situations. Outside of nice white flowers, it is not a beautiful tree to use in regular landscapes. It is brittle wooded and easily breaks in storms. When it goes wild into nature, it develops horrible sharp branchlets that really hurt and it is really getting aggressive in fields. The first great cultivar of 'Bradford' was a very broad, rounded form that I saw a good number of times break up from storms (I remember seeing one specimen in northeast Illinois breaking right in half), and it was discontinued by the nursery industry by 2000. A number of other cultivars were also discontinued for the same reason. A few more upright, tighter-growing cultivars, such as 'Cleveland Select' and 'Chanticleer,' are still being sold a lot because their breakage is not as severe. This species from China is not very useful for American native beneficial insects, and the fruit is not really good for native birds. I call this "the Chinese Rat Tree."

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Wild descendants of landscape specimens are now completely filling some highway right of ways here in central Maryland. It readily takes hold when areas are left unmowed.

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