The Trees of Harte Infiniti

Well known to the customers and employees of Harte Infiniti are the large oval shaped trees on the north side of the dealership which split the lot and provide shade to the customer parking area outside of the service department. My informal research places them in the species Pyrus Calleryana of the family Rosaceae. They are more commonly known as the Callery Pear. They are a dicidous tree, native to eastern Asia, named for Joseph-Marie Callery, who imported samples of the tree to Europe in the 1800s. Several cultivars of Callery pear are offered commercially, including 'Aristocrat', 'Autumn Blaze', 'Bradford' (the commonly planted Bradford pear), 'Capital', 'Cleveland Select', 'New Bradford', 'Redspire', and 'Whitehouse'.



The fruits of the Callery pear are small (less than one cm in diameter), and hard (almost woody) until softened by frost, after which they are readily taken by birds, which disperse the seeds in their droppings. The white, five-petaled flowers are about 2 to 3 cm (0.79 to 1.2 in) in diameter, and are produced abundantly in early spring, before the leaves expand fully.



In summer, the foliage is dark green, very smooth, and very glossy, alternating from ovate to broad-ovate to orbicular, with a cordate to truncate base, acuminate tip, and finely serrated margins. The foliage flutters in the breeze due to the leaf base and the 2" long petiole. In autumn the leaves commonly turn brilliant colors, ranging from yellow and orange to more commonly red, pink, purple, and bronze. Sometimes, several of these fall colors may be present on an individual leaf. At the latitude of Hartford CT, the trees often remain green until mid-November, and in warm autumns, the colors are often a brilliant end to the fall color season



They are extremely resistant to disease and blight, and are more commonly damaged by windstorms than sickness. The only liability of this species is its poor branching habit, which renders the tree a sitting duck for major branch shearing at times of high winds or heavy ice load. This is caused by the numerous weak crotch angles, due to the vertical co-dominant central leaders that repeat up and down the canopy, with narrow angles of separation betwen the vertical branches, having little strength at their points of attachment to each other. Thankfully, ours seem to be just fine !


Source: http://www.hort.uconn.edu/