Flowering Pear Tree

Flowering Pear
Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford'
(PY-russ) (kal-lee-ree-AH-nuh)
Synonyms: Callery Pear

I was surprised to see Bradford Pear so widely planted in San Diego. There is a multitude of reasons for not planting these trees and they don’t seem as popular here in Connecticut anymore. Let’s look at the Pros and Cons of this species:

Pros
Really beautiful when in flower
Can grow in most conditions
Late and Persistent Fall Color
Can be pruned to shape
Fast growing
Early Blooming

Cons
Very weak wooded and the angles of the branches make it prone to splitting in snow and ice
Short life span (25-35 years)
Inedible fruit and the flowers smell bad
Often seeds in some areas. The seedling tree is not as nice.

We don’t use Bradford Pears too often anymore although I do love them when they are flowering (from a distance). They should be blooming here in a month or so. The fall color can be amazing as it becomes multi-colored with yellow, orange and red. Sometimes the foliage is frosted off the tree green, like last year. The early flowers can be susceptible to late spring frosts.

Since the Bradford flower picture has a little blue sky showing through I thought I would do Skywatch Friday. These other pictures are from the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California. These shots were taken overlooking the city of Palm Desert. It was quite a dramatic road to get to the vista point and as a passenger I got a little weak at a few of the huge drop offs that didn’t even have a guardrail.

That is a road with a car on it in the lower left hand corner!


For more skies from around the world go to
Skywatch Friday Home Page