Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

CALLERY PEAR

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Pyrus calleraya Decne.

Riley County, Kansas

Height: Trees, to 65 feet

Family: Rosaceae - Rose Family

Flowering Period: March, April

Also Called:

Bradford pear.

Trunks:

Trunks erect; branches usually armed, thorns reddish brown to grayish brown, .4 to 1.2 inches, glabrous; bark gray, reddish, or orangish brown, smooth or eventually with blackish rectangular plates; wood white, hard.

Twigs:

Reddish brown to grayish brown, rigid, initially tomentose, becoming glabrous with age; leaf scar triangular; buds reddish brown, ovoid, .16 to .4 inch, apex acute to acuminate, scales glabrous, glabrate, or sparsely to densely tomentose.

Leaves:

Deciduous, alternate, simple; stipules caducous, free, lanceolate, .4 to .63 inch, margins entire or obscurely serrulate; petiole .8 to 1.8 inch, upper surface sparsely pubescent, sometimes also on lower surface, becoming glabrous with age; blade ovate to oblong, 1.6 to 3.6 inches long, 1.4 to 2.4 inches wide, base cuneate to rounded, margins crenulate-serrulate or entire, often with tufts of white hairs when young, becoming glabrous with age, apex acuminate, lower surface light green, glabrous, upper surface dark green, glabrous.

Flowers:

Inflorescences terminal on short shoots, racemes or umbel-like corymbs, 4-9-flowered, appearing before or sometimes with leaves; peduncles 0 to .2 inch, tomentose, glabrate; pedicels .4 to 1.2 inch, glabrous. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric, .6 to 1 inch diam.; hypanthium bell-shaped or cupular, .06 to .1 inch, glabrous or pubescent; sepals 5, reflexed, lanceolate, .14 to .2 inch long, .04 to .08 inch wide; petals 5, white, obovate, .24 to .5 inch; stamens 20; pistils 2-3(-4), mostly connate, adnate to hypanthium, glabrous; styles 2-3, terminal, distinct, glabrous.

Fruit:

September-October; pomes, brown to yellowish brown with white or tan dots, globose, .4 to .6 inch diam., glabrous, not glaucous, fleshy; hypanthium persistent; sepals deciduous; carpel walls becoming leathery; seeds 1-2(-4), dark brown, reddish brown, or gray with black spots or streaks, angular-obovoid, .16 to .22 inch long, .08 to .16 inch wide, .06 to .16 inch thick, smooth.

Habitat:

Urban woodlots, pastures, fencerows, woodland margins, disturbed sites.

Distribution:

Scattered in east 1/2 of Kansas

Origin:

Naturalized

Comments:

Pyrus calleryana is a widely planted ornamental, popular for its showy (but malodorous) white spring blossoms and red, maroon, burgundy, or yellow fall foliage. However, it has become a serious urban and suburban weed in eastern Kansas in the past 10 years. The Bradford pear is the first of what are now many cultivars of the Callery pear.

Callery pear inflorescence