Callery Pear, the Wild Bradford Pear, in Michigan: How to Identify the Thorny Thickets and How They Get Cleared
The Gibson Environmental Services crew
More than 10 years clearing land, cutting trails, and running forestry equipment in Southeast Michigan.
The thorny pear trees coming up in old fields, along roadsides and across pasture edges in Southeast Michigan are Callery pear, the wild offspring of the Bradford pear and the other flowering pear cultivars planted in subdivisions for forty years. The yard trees were sold as sterile; planted near each other they cross-pollinate, the birds eat the fruit, and the seedlings that come up in a field carry the sharp thorns their parents were bred to lose. Established populations ring Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, and a field left alone for a decade near any of them fills with it.
This guide covers how to identify Callery pear in bloom, in leaf and in winter, what it looks like at thicket scale, why cutting it is the start of a plan rather than the end of one, how we clear a thicket with a forestry mulcher and what the thorns mean for the cleanup, and the Michigan natives that give the same spring bloom without the thicket. It belongs with our guides to weed trees and trash trees and the worst invasive plants in Michigan.
How to Identify Callery Pear
| Season | What to look for |
|---|---|
| April | Clusters of five-petaled white flowers with maroon-tipped anthers, before the leaves, with a smell most people describe as fishy or rotten. A field edge in bloom in early April before anything else is white is usually pear. |
| Summer | Oval to heart-shaped glossy dark-green leaves with small rounded teeth, leathery, alternate on the twig; the tree is a teardrop or an oval, 30 to 60 feet when open-grown, much shorter in a thicket. |
| Fall | Deep red, maroon and orange color in November, late, after the maples; small round speckled fruit, a third to half an inch, that hangs on into winter and softens for the birds after frost. |
| Winter | Smooth gray-brown bark on young trees; stout spur shoots that end in sharp thorns on the wild seedlings and persist on older trees; the yard cultivars have few or none. |
| Thicket | Dozens of stems a few feet apart, all the same age, in full sun on disturbed ground, with the thorns at tire and ankle height. Birds spread it along fence rows and roadsides. |
Look-alikes: American plum blooms white in the same weeks and forms thickets too, but its thickets are shorter and denser, its leaves are thinner and toothed, and its fruit is a plum. Hawthorn has thorns and white bloom but lobed leaves and a flat crown. Serviceberry blooms white a week earlier with no thorns and no smell. Our 12-month clearing calendar lists April as the month to find pear.
Why It Spreads, and Where
A single Bradford pear is self-sterile. A street of them, in six or eight cultivars, is not, and the cross-pollinated fruit is what the robins and starlings carry to the field edge. The seedlings are thorny, fast, tolerant of wet and dry ground and of poor soil, leaf out early and hold their leaves late, which is the same light-stealing trick buckthorn uses. The extension guides describe the result: dense thorny thickets in old fields, restored grasslands, roadsides, retention basins and forest edges that shade out everything native. In Southeast Michigan the thickets are thickest within a few miles of the subdivisions that planted the parents.
How Callery Pear Gets Cleared, by the Size of the Problem
Seedlings and saplings
Pull them in moist soil in spring, roots and all, or mow them. A pasture or field that is brush hogged every summer never grows a pear thicket; the thickets are in the fields that were skipped for five years.
A thicket
The forestry mulcher takes the whole stand down to the ground in the dormant season and grinds the thorny limbs into chips with the rest, which is the main advantage over cutting and piling: nobody handles the thorns, and there is no thorny pile. The chips lie flat and are gone by the second summer.
The stumps
Callery pear sprouts from the stump and from the lateral roots, so the cut is step one. The extension guides recommend a cut-stump treatment the same day, or grinding, and a mowing pass over the sprouts the next two summers runs the roots out. Our guide to stumps after forestry mulching covers the sprouting species.
Larger trees
Open-grown pears of thirty feet are felled first, dropped away from the keepers, and then mulched or cut to length. Pear wood is dense and burns well, and the trunks are usually thornless; the branches are not.
Pastures
Thorns puncture tires and hooves, which is why a pear thicket in a pasture is cleared and the chips left to settle before the animals go back, and why the field is mowed every year afterward; see pasture reclamation.
Timing
Find it in April, when the bloom gives every pear away, and in November, when the late red color does the same. Cut it in the dormant season, when the ground is firm and a dormant cut sprouts least. Treat stumps or mow sprouts from late summer into fall, when the plant is moving reserves to the roots. Pull seedlings in spring. A thicket is a two-year job: the clearing pass, then the sprout passes.
What to Plant Instead
The reason the Bradford pear was planted everywhere was a week of white bloom in April and a shape that needed no pruning. Four Michigan natives give the bloom without the thicket: serviceberry, white and a week earlier, with fruit the birds strip in June; hawthorn, white, thorny but not a spreader; American plum, white and fragrant, a thicket where you want one; and eastern redbud, pink, native to the southern counties. For a cleared field edge, the swap table in what to plant after removing buckthorn and honeysuckle has the full list by sun and soil.
Common Questions
Is Bradford pear invasive in Michigan?
Its wild offspring are. Cross-pollinated fruit from the yard cultivars is carried by birds into fields, roadsides and edges, where the thorny seedlings form dense thickets. Established populations ring Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.
Why does the Bradford pear smell bad?
The flowers carry a scent most people describe as fishy or rotten; it attracts the flies and beetles that pollinate them. It is one of the easiest ways to tell a pear thicket in April from the plums and serviceberries blooming near it.
Are the thorny wild pear trees in my field Bradford pears?
They are Callery pears, the seedlings of Bradford and the other flowering pear cultivars. The wild seedlings keep the thorns the yard trees were bred to lose, which is why a pear thicket is harder on tires and hooves than a plum thicket.
How do I kill a Bradford pear stump?
Treat the fresh cut the same day, or grind the stump and the lateral roots, and mow the sprouts that come up from the roots for the next two summers. Pear sprouts from the stump and from the roots a yard away, so a cut without a follow-up grows a bush.
Can a pear thicket be mulched?
Yes, and it is the best way to clear one: a forestry mulcher grinds the trunks, the thorny limbs and the stumps into chips where they stand, so nobody handles the thorns and nothing is piled. The sprouts get a mowing pass the next two summers.
What should I plant instead of a Bradford pear?
Serviceberry for the white April bloom and June fruit, hawthorn where you want a tough small tree, American plum where you want a thicket, and eastern redbud for pink bloom in the southern counties. None of them seed a field the way pear does.
When is the best time to clear Callery pear?
Dormant season for the cut, on firm or frozen ground; late summer into fall for stump treatment and sprout mowing; spring for pulling seedlings. Find it in April by the bloom and in November by the late red color.
Sources and Further Reading
The identification features, the cross-pollination story, the thorn and tire note and the removal methods come from these extension and state pages. What we do on our own jobs is stated in the text.
Alabama Cooperative Extension System: Callery Pear: History, Identification and Control (FOR-2078)
Penn State Extension: Callery Pear: Accurate Identification
Michigan Invasive Species Program: Callery pear
University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension: Callery Pear Identification and Control (FSA5038)
Where We Do This Work
The work in this guide is done across eight Southeast Michigan counties from our base in Royal Oak. Every county page lists the townships we work in most, with a page for each.
A Field Edge or Pasture Full of Thorny Pear?
We mulch the thicket in place, thorns and all, and come back for the sprouts. The quote is free.