Bradford Pear - warning

20+ years ago, we moved into our house with NO landscaping. We planted a number of trees, one of which was a Bradford Pear right next to our deck. My wife is the horticulturist in the family and I defer all decisions on what to plant and where to her and we've had few problems until now. The tree has grown tremendously and we have pruned it over the years in order to walk under it. It grows fast and provides plenty of shade for our deck. It seemed like the perfect tree for the situation. We have recently lost 2 of our Ash trees to the Emerald Ash borer and she surmised that the Bradford Pear would be the next victim of disease as it's ubiquitous around our area.

Well, 2 wks ago, I came home and found that one large main limb (approx 12" in diameter at the joint) had split off the trunk and roughtly half the tree's foliage was laying in our backyard. It had been windy but not THAT windy. I attributed it to the fact that the limb had exited the trunk at almost 90 deg before turning upward and that the weight was just too much for it. We pruned some of the other "heavy" limbs but we're going to wait until next year to do any more to avoid shocking the tree.

Then, this past weekend, we saw a Bradford Pear at the front of our subdivision do the same thing.

What's going on, I thought. A little Internet search turned up information on a "genetic" defect in the tree that makes its limbs weak and subject to breakage during wind or ice storms. The defect is more in the way the tree grows. Its branches tend to grow up out of the trunk like flower stems out of a vase. It seems that this makes for weak joints. My wife and I both do not recall this information being available some 20 years ago. Evidently, the species was relatively new and there were few specimens in their 20's to provide any hard historical data on the tree. It's been a VERY popular tree for developers and landscapers to plant over the last couple of decades, so the scuttlebut is that there will be lots of these trees "biting the dust" as they age in the coming years.

I believe that if you know about this "defect", it may be possible to prune it as it grows to minimize the potential loss of limbs. We're going to try and save the tree as it DOES provide a lot of shade, but if you are contemplating planting one, forewarned is forearmed.

The only problem I ever had with pear trees is when we lived on Ft Huachuca in a house that was only several hundred yards from a big canyon. The bears loved em and would come down at night and climb the tree often breaking them off and on some occasions the bears would remain all day of course attracting all kinds of sight lookers. The people were more problem than the bears.

Aah, yes, the Bradford Pear. Apparently used to be very popular, but not anymore. There are lots of them in our area. We bought this house 4 years ago. It was built in 1991, so I'm not sure when the trees were planted. When we first moved in, I had an sickly old weeping willow tree removed from the backyard. That left us with 4 Bradford Pears across the back of the lot, and one Live Oak on the north side, in the backyard, plus one Bradford Pear and one Live Oak in the front yard plus one large Crepe Myrtle in front. I had to do a great deal of pruning to be able to walk under them to mow, and to cut them back from the power lines in back. And yes, wind is hard on Bradford Pear. The north half of the one in the front broke off on 4/10/08, then the south half broke off on 6/10/09, and I had the stump ground down below grade this past week. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] So we only have the 4 in back now and I "butchered" one of them to cut the limbs away from the power line.

yes, the bradford pear is bad...it was developed in maryland in the 70s or 80s and they are everywhere! they developed to grow full and not need pruning...this is because they prune themselves!

its not uncommon after a wind storm to see whole rows of them toppled over.

if we had any, i would remove them...

A Cleveland Select Pear is a better choice these days. Very similar in features less the weak branch structure.

Beautiful trees!

I was actually planning on planting a Bradford Pear but after reading this thread I think I might check out the Cleveland Select. Any idea what Cleveland Select Pear trees are going through these days.