Callery Pear        PI-rus kal-er-ee-A-na

• Deciduous tree, 30-40 ft (9-12 m), variable forms.    Trunk bark is lightly furrowed and grayish brown at maturity.  Note spurs shoots on branches.  Leaves are alternate, simple, leathery, and lustrous dark green.  Foliage can develop a spectacular reddish-purple in fall.  Flowers white, borne in 7.5 cm clusters (cymes).  Fruit small rounded, 10-15 mm across, russet-dotted.
• Sun.  Very adaptable to many different soils; tolerates drying and pollution.
• Hardy to USDA Zone (5)6 , some cultivars listed as hardy to Zone 4    Species native to China, Viet Nam, Japan, and Korea.  Apparently naturalized in Maryland.  Cultivars are more commonly planted than the species.
• Aristocrat^TM  -  leaves narrow, glossy, purple-red to orange fall color.  Narrow branch angles, fast growing, pyramidal habit.  Susceptible to fireblight, USDA Zone 4b.
• ‘Autumn Blaze’  -  horizontal branches from a broad crown.  Develops fall color early, but it is variable; can be bright red.   Reportedly cold hardy to USDA Zone 4.  Selected at Oregon State University by Mel Westwood.
• ‘Bradford’  -  the original introduction and for sometime the "standard", it has several positive features, for example its flowers appear before leaves emege and thus more showy than several other cultivars.  However, it reportedly has a tendency to split with age (see Dirr, 1998, for a good discussion).  It was raised from seed purchased in China in 1919 and named in 1963.
• ‘Capital’  -   glossy leaves, forms a narrow crown (columnar), purple-red to bronze fall color, thornless, and fireblight resistant.
• Chanticleer^® (syn. ‘Select’, ‘Cleveland Select’ ‘Glen's Form’)  -   upright, narrow columnar form, but apparently more than one clone since some are more columnar than others, reddish fall color, USDA Zone 4.
• ‘Redspire’  -  pyramidal form, symmetrical, formal, fall color yellow to red, reportedly goes dormant earlier in fall.
• calleryana: after Joseph M. M. Callery (1810-1862), a missionary.
• Oregon State Univ. campus: southwest Burt Hall (‘Bradford’), northwest Cordley Hall (‘Autumn Blaze’).