Bradford Pear
/The Callery (Bradford) Pear trees near the entrance of our neighborhood are blooming. It was cold and windy when I went out to photograph the flowers. Supposedly the trees have value as early season food for pollinators – but I didn’t see any – probably because it was so cold.
Their trunks are heavy with lichen…which I like to photograph….magnified with my phone. On the day I was out, lichen was one of the few macro opportunities since everything else was moving too much with the wind. The textures (crevices of the bark, delicate lobes or nets of lichen, ovoid shapes on the top of the larger lichens) and colors (brown and black of the bark; orange and greenish gray lichen) are nature’s abstracts.
My house was built near the end of the 90s so the Callery Pear trees in the community space at the entrance might be nearing the end of their lifespan which is typically less than 25 years if they were planted about the same time as my house was built. The trees appear to have been radically trimmed not that many years ago and that might have prolonged their life since the trees tend to be damaged by wind (big branches or trunks breaking). Hopefully another species of tree will replace them since most conservation agencies view the trees as invasive and not as appealing as they were decades ago. I know I have a Callery Pear hybrid that came up very close to a crepe myrtle. I cut it down as soon as I discovered it…and punctured myself as I was hauling it out before I realized that it had thorns! I am still cutting all the leaves that sprout from the stump since I don’t think I can dig deep enough to get it out without also digging up the crepe myrtle.
But – they do have pretty blooms in the spring.
