Encountered in a church parking lot:
It looks like they are an affectionate married couple!
Sing “The Bradford Pear and the Crepe Myrtle Can Be Friends” to this tune:
When I posted these pictures on our store’s Facebook page, Linda commented:
“Sure, until the Bradford pear reverts to its Callery pear origin and becomes a thorny nightmare. My dad’s did. Sawed it down – it’s coming back so Imma paint it in BrushTOX.”
The wild Bradford pears are not popular around here. They are thorny and unpleasant. However, we have had good luck grafting fruiting pears on top of them:
And this is the update video:
Another thing we like about Bradford pears is their wood. It’s remarkably beautiful, often with ripply tiger-stripes inside that you can see when varnished. CJ has made sickle handles with the wood and they looked great.
That said, I think more people should over-graft them, and if they don’t overgraft, at least cut them for lumber and save the wood.
On that note, here’s an amusing grafting project involving Bradford pears:
As for the Bradford pear’s Crepe Myrtle spouse, I haven’t found much she is good for other than living through the Southern heat and looking pretty. Though I have heard the wood is pretty.
This site shows a picture of the grain. The wood is quite dense and is reportedly good for mallets and decorative items, though quite hard to work.
But all that aside, I just thought it was interesting to see these two common Southern landscape trees married together.
