Pear tree - not bradford

15 years ago

I have a fruit-bearing pear tree (not sure what kind as I inherited it when we bought the house). The first couple of years, it produced plenty of fruit. Last year was pretty wimpy (almost non-existent), but I chalked that off to lack of water. This year seems to be shaping up to be a bit more productive, but it's still early.

However, I noticed this year that the amount of leaves it has seems to have thinned. And it has these strange little clusters of balls/berries (?) on it. (I can try to take a pic, but thought someone might be familiar without it.) I remember noticing these clusters last year, but not in previous years, and certainly not as prolific as it seems to be this year. Almost like these clusters are replacing leaves.

Any ideas? Is my tree normal? Is it dieing?

~Michelle

Comments (5)

don_licuala
15 years ago
Is it flowering?
jmzms
Original Author
15 years ago
It's way past flowering time. Here are a couple of photos. One overview so you can see how sparse the leaves look. The other is a closeup so you can see the clusters. One thing I didn't mention is that it appears the clusters are on the male tree. (Believe it or not, the male and female were planted in the same hole and have grown together as one tree.)

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lucky_p
15 years ago
Your fruiting pear was grafted on callery pear (P.calleryana) rootstock, and someone, somewhere along the line, let one or more shoots from the callery rootstock grow up, without pruning them out, so now you have a fruiting callery pear.
I can't tell from the distance photo which of the three main trunks is the actual 'fruiting/edible' pear, and which are the non-edible callery type? From the looks of that tree, it appears that the bulk of it is callery and not the more desirable fruiting selection.
Iris GW
15 years ago
I agree with lucky_p. You now have an ornamental pear similar to 'Bradford'.

Pear trees are not male and female, by the way. But it sounds like someone might have planted more than one type of tree for cross pollination benefits.
jmzms
Original Author
15 years ago
Lucky & Esh, I believe you are correct. I posted on the fruits/orchards forum also and got the same basic response. And you're right, the majority of the tree is the non-fruiting one. DH and I keep looking at it trying to figure out the best resolution. I hate to chop the whole thing down and start over. There's actually 5 main branches coming out of the ground. Two of them are the fruiting tree, but they're pretty much engulfed by the callery, so we think even cutting out small sections at a time won't work. *ugh* Perhaps it's fate saying that I need to completely re-do the front yard. :-)

Thanks for your help.