Escaped pears shoot up into power lines. Photo by Brett O'Brien
(left) Columbia, Missouri's "Stop the Spread" campaign has
been successful in educating the City's residents about why
not to plant Callery pear. Photo by Brett O'Brien
We recently hired an arborist who is tasked with man-
aging Callery pears on our greenways and in our natural areas
as part of our Reforest the Bluegrass program. Cutting down the
pears is a hard sell to the general public who love the pears'
blooms in the spring. To restore these parcels of land is not a
quick and easy venture—this takes time and patience. Where
we've removed the pears, we replanted with native trees and
shrubs to keep the competition at bay.
At a tree board meeting not long ago, a developer said they'd
looked at a recent aerial photo of a development in our area
and wondered if all the white blobs were sheep. A closer look
revealed that it was thousands of pear trees in bloom. They
are a major problem in Central Kentucky and they outcompete
many of our native trees and shrubs … not really the canopy
gains we are looking for.
When I was in County Kildare, Ireland three years ago on the
SMA Arborist Exchange program, my host Simon Wallace was
delighted with the Callery pear and how well it was adapting to
Ireland's climate/conditions. I tried to warn him about potential
invasiveness and recently followed up with him.
He said, "The pears are behaving themselves fine in Kildare. It
is mainly Pyrus 'Chanticleer' that is used as a street tree here
and in Dublin—but not extensively. There are some issues with
the brittle wood, but only very occasional. The trees do not fruit
very well here if at all due to the cooler summers we get. The
same would be the case with the common pear so we have no
issues with reseeding or invasion as a result."
—John Saylor, Arborist and Senior Program Manager,
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, Kentucky
www.urban-forestry.com 21
