Callery pear

Photo: Bruce Marlin — CC BY 3.0 · source

Survives zone 5 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Better known by its ornamental cultivar name, Bradford pear. The fruit is edible only in the loosest sense — hard, gritty and astringent raw, and even after bletting and cooking (as it's traditionally used in China, for fruit wine and medicine) it stays bland; nobody grows this for the eating. ⚠ Seeds mildly poisonous in quantity — cyanogenic like most Rosaceae pips. ⚠ Aggressively invasive: established outside cultivation in 25+ US states, forms dense thickets, and its sale is now banned or being phased out in several (including Ohio, South Carolina and Pennsylvania). Site with real caution, or avoid.

Spread warning. Established outside cultivation in 25+ US states, forming dense thickets and suppressing other plants; sale banned or being phased out in Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and other states. What was bred as a sterile ornamental cross-pollinates with other Callery pear cultivars once several are planted in an area, producing viable, bird-spread seed — which is exactly how it went from single-cultivar street tree to a genuine invasive species.

Hardiness

Zone 5–9

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer

Mature size

Fast-growing, 9–15 m (30–50 ft) tall, 6–10.7 m (20–35 ft) wide

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

5.0–8.0 (acid to alkaline) — very soil-tolerant

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Southeastern China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Vietnam — slopes, plains, mixed valley forest and thickets.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

3–5 yrs

Growth speed

Rapid

Spacing

600 cm (236 in) apart — about 36 m² (388 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, broadly ovate to rounded, 4–8 cm, glossy dark green with finely scalloped margins and a long petiole — colouring late and brilliantly in autumn, which is much of why it was planted so widely.

Root system

Deep-rooting from seed, with a strong early taproot — which is exactly why wild pears are grown as rootstocks. On a bought tree the roots are the stock's, not the species': pear seedling gives a large, deep, drought-tough tree, quince gives a dwarf with shallow roots that needs staking and watering for life.

Fruit description

Small, round, yellowish-green to brown, hard and gritty; not palatable raw

Propagation

Grafted for named cultivars; seed germinates freely after cold stratification, which is part of the problem described under pollination.

Pollination

Each cultivar is self-incompatible, and for decades that was taken to mean the tree was safely sterile. It was not — it only meant a single cultivar could not fruit alone. Once 'Bradford' was widely replaced by other cultivars after its weak branching became notorious, genetically different trees stood within pollinating range of each other, set heavy crops of small fruit, and birds carried the seed into open ground. That is the mechanism behind its status as one of the worst invasive trees in the eastern United States. Plant it, if at all, knowing that.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.