https://www.wric.com/news/nature-and-outdoors/invasive-callery-pear-tree-exchange-event/
Saw this somewhere, if you happen to live in virginia, i believe typically Virginia has things like persimmon, black walnut, paw paw, and hickory available. may be of interest if you have a tree youre planning on removing anyway 
It’s a good idea, but I would rather see places offer to cut the Bradford pears down and leave the root stock and bark graft several varieties of edible pear.
Would hate to see those usable and well-established root stocks go to waste when they could be utilized to grow food.
i hear this but the root stock may just revert. so i dont know if i agree with this. i think its fine for something if its too costly to remove or if its on your property where you can care for it. but i see people doing it in the wild and like. huh thats not gonna work. it’ll just sucker eventually
I am with Oklahoma’s position on Callery/Bradford. Dig up. Destroy. create a twenty foot hole to kill all roots. Grind into mush. Then incinerate the mush at 2000 degree C.
In the spring you can see acres and acres of dense thickets blooming between Richmond and northern Virginia. A few data centers have wiped out some of them. But it is a losing battle at this point. Last year the DOF gave away 300 trees to landowners.
Virginia passed a labeling law this year that requires a tag on nursery stock saying it was an invasive species. But it doesn’t go into effect until 2027. Some states have banned the sale of it.
Yes, the root stock could revert and would need to be maintained.
After reading about the replacement program, I got the impression that people had to document the identification of the pear tree and the removal in the request for a free tree. I don’t think people are doing this program for wild invasive pear trees. I’m assuming they’re doing it for trees on their own property that they could potentially maintain. If they are doing it for wild trees then certainly this would not apply but that was not my impression.
As great as native species are and as great as it is to replace an invasive species with a native species, it’s been shown by many other people on this forum that you can successfully grow several different cultivars of edible pear from callery rootstock, and if you tried several bark graphs on a tree and only one or two took and all you did after that was just prune out any of the growth from the rootstock so only the Scion wood was growing, you could potentially get decent harvests of edible fruit in places where you might not have access to any fruit.
If you’re living in a food desert, and the option is a native tree or grafting an edible pear to an invasive pear, I think the grafting option wins, but that’s just me.
Trying to get rid of invasive species is almost always a losing battle. The only time it actually works is when it is caught in the early stages before much of a population has developed, or in very restricted areas such as a medium/small island. Typically, by the time a species is recognized as invasive they are already well established and spreading, and by then it’s to late. Most of these programs to target invasives are little more than feel good measures. Like catching pythons in the everglades. Sure, they will get some, but not enough to eliminate them, and probably not even enough to meaningfully slow the spread.
Why oh why would you want to promote a marginal invasive rootstock when Virginia will happily sell you 10 Pyrus communis ‘Bartlett’ for $25???
In my part of Virginia, lined driveways of Bradfords and Aristocrats were popular back in the 90’s. Most of those were taken out by hurricanes. Can’t say the same for the driveways of Eastern Red Cedars that still abound.
Waste of time money and energy.
Here in Ohio they have banned the nurseries from selling them since January of 2023. The callery trees are EVERYWHERE. In the spring you can see acres and acres of them blooming. If you travel up and down any interstate type highway it is an ocean of nothing but them blooming. It is sickening to see how they have invaded here.
When we moved into our house (Northeast Ohio) I let the front field go fallow and immediately had about 10 trees start aggressively growing, I later realized they were all callery pears. It is indeed amazing how invasive they are
I’m not promoting a invasive tree as rootstock.
They are invasive, they are aggressive, and they are a massive nuisance. I’m not disputing any of that.
I’m simply saying you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If you already have a 10 to 20-year-old callery pear tree growing on your property, and you can bother to maintain cutting out any new wood from the rootstock, you’re better off giving a heading cut at about 3 ft off the ground and using the stump to add bark grafts of edible pears. An established rootstock like this might produce pears much faster as well.
It’s not like Virginia is going to do this, it was just an idea.
I personally don’t use it as rootstock but there are plenty of people here who do. Maybe you should scold them instead.
I am hardly the only one who endorsing eliminating Callery/Bradley. Seems most folks do.
Yeah the logic of guess theres nothing ee can do is so sad. Id love to see national guard mobilized to deal with invasive plants and wild boar someday. Seems like a worthwhile cause
It is good to see some places making headway in removing feral hogs.
I have 3 sons who trap them here. But lawd they just keep breeding.
But I do get it. I want to try Cluster and Elephant Ear Figs as rootstock. But they are not as invasive as many of their strangler fig cousins.
Both can handle temps to 8A once the seedlings are hardened off. With some die back the first few years.
Cluster has nematode resistance and both are much more vigorous then domestic figs. There are some gorgeous Elephant Ear fig trees in Georgia. Don’t know if they are RKN resistant. But they really love it here and do not spread.
I’m using it as rootstock. Seems to be working okay so far. I will need to remove the mulch and just mow under it as it will sucker immensely.
Wow!
The only problem is that you/ someone will have to always watch it. Humans tend to fail when unflagging vigilance is required. We get distracted, move away, etc…
