Callery Pear
Pyrus calleryana (ROSACEAE)
Planting and Growing Callery Pear Trees
You’ll find everything you need to know to plant and grow callery pear in the accompanying table’s tabs:
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- Flowers, foliage, and fruit of callery pear
- Growing conditions for callery pear
- When to plant callery pear
- How to plant callery pear
- How to prune callery pear
- Watering, fertilizing, and care of callery pear
- Landscape uses of callery pear
- Pest and disease control for callery pear
Growing Callery Pear Trees
Many cultivars of fast-growing, upright, round-crowned or columnar, open, thorny, semi-evergreen trees, to 50 ft. (15 m) tall, with shiny, green, broadly oval, pointed leaves, to 3 in. (75 mm) long, turning red, yellow in autumn, and with gray green, smooth bark. Most cultivars bear insignificant, inedible fruit.
Avoid the brittle, disease-susceptible, short-lived Pyrus calleryana ‘Bradford’ cultivar; choose instead Pyrus calleryana ‘Aristocrat’, ‘Chanticleer’, ‘Redspire’, or ‘Whitehouse cultivars’.
Distribution, sale, and planting of callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) is prohibited in some jurisdictions due to its uncontrolled spread and invasive habit; check with your governmental agency prior to planting.
Callery Pear Planting and Care Guide
Flowers and Fruit
Many showy, unpleasantly fragrant, white, simple flowers, to 1 in. (25 mm) wide, in early spring, borne in stemmed clusters, form brown, pearlike, inedible fruit or are fruitless, depending on cultivar.
Best Climates
U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zones 5–9. Best with winter chill.
Soil Type and Fertility
Damp, well-drained soil. Fertility: Average. 6.5–7.5 pH.
Where and How to Plant
Full sun. Space 8–12 ft. (2.4–3.7 m) apart.
Proper Care
Easy. Allow soil surface to dry between waterings until established. Fertilize annually in spring. Prune in autumn. Propagate by budding, grafting.
About This Species
Good choice for accents, backgrounds, borders, containers, edgings, paths, walls in formal, small-space gardens. Smog tolerant. Pest, disease, and fire blight resistant. Invasive.