Contrary to Pear Belief
Ornamental pear trees, like this Aristocrat Pear, are not recommended as a good shade tree to plant for many reasons. I won’t go into all the reasons in this post, but one of the reasons has always been that these trees do not provide food for wildlife.
That’s a bunch of bunk! I have observed on many occasions this summer the squirrels up in my pear trees munching on the little pears. It’s hard to get a picture because the trees are so dense. (That’s one of the reasons the trees aren’t recommended for planting — the density turns the tree into an umbrella. What happens to umbrellas on particularly windy days? They blow away.) So anyway, back to the food discussion. Today, I pulled into my driveway and was pelted by falling pear nuts. The squirrel up in the tree (above) was ripping open the nuts and eating the fruit in the middle, then throwing the rest away.
From the looks of all the pear litter under the tree, the squirrels have been feasting for WEEKS. There are shells EVERYWHERE!
To all those arborists who swear up and down that squirrels don’t eat pear nuts, feel free to come study my trees. Squirrels DO eat the pears in ornamental pear trees. Now, about whether or not a tree that provides food for SQUIRRELS is a worthy tree is another Tree Grower’s Diary post altogether.
I can vouche for the “flying away” part. We moved into this house — had a nice deck beautifully shaded by an ornamental pear (and a crababble — I think — I really don’t know my trees). We hung a rope chair from a branch. We loved it. That Summer, during a wind storm, half of it blew off — pretty much right down the middle. Still, there was shade and I figured with half the wind resistance, we were good. The next month, another storm, and we’re watching its shadow, in the middle of the night, on our window. Going down, back up, down, back up, ….. until one time we didn’t see it come back up. Next morning we find it completely toppled over onto a cherry tree. Took out a third of the cherry on its way down.
I think it’s illegal to plant them in this town, now. It seemed every house in the city had piles of ornamental pear tree parts in the street in front. I saved some for firewood. After four years, I might try burning some this year.
The squirrels don’t really bother me, it’s the striped rats (that some people call “chipmunks” but I know better) that dig that get on my nerves.
Comment by Adam Squier — September 9, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
Dang! There are a lot of typos there. Uh, “vouch” and crab aPPle (though crababble sounds like a fun word to say). Probably more and I wish I could edit posts like on OSP.
Comment by Adam Squier — September 9, 2007 @ 9:28 pm