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March 7, 2023
Tree
They are down everywhere in my neighborhood – the branches of the Bradford pear. I see them on my walk, half a tree torn away from a still-standing half, the still-standing half left gashed, wounded, open.
Beth comes by with the well-behaved Finnegan on his leash and asks me what happened.
“They are Bradford pears,” I explain to her. “Beautiful to look at but structurally unsound. They were the darling of the landscape trade once, but,” and here I point to the carnage before us, “not any more.”
I had one once myself.
I had purchased the lot and begun building a house in my suburban neighborhood in the springtime and as I walked the streets I was greeted by the sight of many ‘Bradford’ pears in full bloom. It gave me the feel of being in a snowstorm in May.
That first summer, as the house was being built and as I watched it go up, I saw the ‘Bradford’ leaves turn a dark and glossy green; they held that color throughout the summer, no matter the heat or drought. Walking in my neighborhood that fall, having finally moved in, I saw those same leaves ablaze with dark reds, yellows, oranges.
I fell in love with its shape too. The ‘Bradford’ pear does not look like the tree I learned to draw in kindergarten — a single main trunk and staggered branches coming off at 45-degree angles on alternate sides. Instead, the ‘Bradford’ has a short base with branches that grow up and over at tight angles so that, when mature, it looks like a brandy snifter and could even be said to resemble a pear.
This growth pattern gives it a lovely, symmetrical, uniformly rounded form. When it reaches maturity at 25 feet with a canopy of 25 feet as well, the tree is architecturally splendid and indeed unique; there is no tree quite like it. Add in the fact that the ‘Bradford’ pear is subject to none of the major diseases of trees and has no notable pest problems, and you have a home-owner’s dream-come-true tree.
I was smitten and determined to have one myself. I arranged for an October planting. Then came a severe September thunderstorm and I saw a different side of the Bradford pear. I saw there is a reason for wanting trees that look like the ones I drew in kindergarten. The branch structure that makes the rounded canopy of the Bradford pear so pleasing, those branches angled sharply upward from a stumpy trunk, creates a week tree, one that is susceptible to storm damage whether from wind or ice or heavy wet snow. In my neighborhood whole trees were down. Others had lost large limbs.
I reconsidered. I called the landscaper whom I had hired to plant my tree. Pat told me of the despair filling the landscape industry as they watched the ‘Bradford’ coming down everywhere.
“Yes,” he said, “we should have known it was too good to be true. But look, we now have a cultivar that does not have the same structural problems as the ‘Bradford.’ Let’s plant a ‘Cleveland Select.’”
We did. I called it “the cocktail tree” because, even when first planted and quite small, it provided shade for two people on my patio at four in the afternoon when the western sun was strongest and the need for a glass of wine the greatest.Over the years it doubled in size, then doubled again, and then again. Eventually it shaded the whole patio.
I believed I had found a cultivar with all the virtues of the ‘Bradford’ but without its structural problems. I don’t know why I believed this. ‘Cleveland Select’ looked just like the ‘Bradford’ and had its magnificent brandy-snifter structure.
Still, for seven years my pear tree grew; for seven years “too good to be true” seemed possible. But then one September a late afternoon tornado tore a path through my garden and found ‘Cleveland Select’ in its way. It broke in two, just like a ‘Bradford.’
Though I believe in allowing time to do the work of grief – my children have never forgiven me the year I made them wait before we got another cat — within days of removing the last traces of ‘Cleveland Select,’ I realized that I could not face the next summer’s sun without a tree in that spot off my patio. I had to replace it now.
But with what? Surely I would not be so foolish as to select another Callery pear when there are so many trees to choose from. I went on-line, I read and re-read Simon Toomer’s Trees for the Small Garden, I consulted Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Pat suggested an Oxydendrum. I went to the nearest arboretum to see one; I rejected it immediately.
I used to tell the customers of my garden design business that there are always alternatives, especially native alternatives to the foreign invasives they often wanted me to plant for them. But as I sought an alternative to the Callery pear, itself a foreign invasive, I discovered something rather disturbing: sometimes there really are no alternatives, native or other.
I did not want to plant another Callery pear. I did not want to plant another tree so vulnerable to wind and storm. I did not want to be ten years older and once again have no shade on my summer patio. I did not want to plant a tree that is potentially invasive.
Still, I wanted a tree just like the Callery pear – one with an upright shape, yet spreading, but not too spreading; large enough to shade the patio but not so large as to reach the deck. I wanted a tree small enough to look good in the middle of my extensive patio garden, and one whose root structure would let me plant beneath it. Having lost my Japanese maple to verticillium wilt and my Merrill magnolia to scale, I found the disease and pest free attributes of the Callery pear irresistible.
I called Pat and gave him the news that I wanted, no, had to have,another Callery pear. A week or so later he showed up with a young tree.
“I picked the cultivar with the best structure,” he said. “It doesn’t have the same fall color, but it has held up better than ‘Cleveland Select’ in strength tests.”
“Yes,” I said, after reading the tag. “I saw the report on the New Jersey highway test. It gives Pyrus calleryana ‘Aristocrat’ the best marks for structural strength.”
“They all come down in twenty years,” said Pat, forgetting that he was about to plant a Callery pear for me, “and most of them don’t last more than ten.
My “Aristocrat” is still standing despite the storm that brought heavy wet branch-breaking snow to my corner of the world. It is not the same tree as the one I lost. It does not have the same magnificent fall color as my ‘Cleveland Select,’ nor does it have the same brandy snifter structure, but it provides needed shade in the summer and offers a resting spot for birds in winter. Just last week it was filled with robins gorging themselves on the tiny pears that must have just become sweet enough to induce such a feeding frenzy.
Still, every time there is a fierce wind sweeping across my backyard or a wet and heavy snow, I go white with fear. |