I’ve been cleaning up some trees in my neighborhood and came across a row of neglected Callery pears planted near a fence line. I was surprised when I came across the tree below with these large fruit on branches from the suckers growing at the base of the trunk. The rest of the tree has the small fruit typical of Callery pears.
Anyone seen anything like this? Could it be that the trees were grafted to rootstock that would yield large fruit like this? Any other explanations?
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It is very likely that the rootstock out grew the original pear tree. That is what is left of the grafted pear tree. It is a possibility that a guerrilla grafter visited that tree and grafted the callery with large pears.
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Maybe it’s fruit from one of the OHxF rootstocks. I’ve noticed callery grafted onto European roots when the rootstocks start suckering and reveal their leaves.
Gorilla grafter? Picturing a 400 pound Clark going around manhandling pear trees. Guerilla grafter? More likely! 
smile, I did.
Why hasn’t someone bred a Calleryana with large fruit?
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Aren’t the “large” ones acorn sized?
Callery typically produces fruit about 1/2 inch diameter. I know of a tree on the side of the road that makes 1.5 inch diameter fruit. More important, Callery crosses easily with large fruited pears and produces fertile offspring. It would be several years work, but should be possible to produce a pear 80% Callery with large edible fruit.
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