Washtenaw County Conservation District

An Easy Trick to Pollinate a Solitary Pear Tree

I haven’t got much room for trees at my house, but I wanted one fruit tree, and I love pears. So in 2021 I ordered a pear tree through the Washtenaw County Conservation Department’s plant sale. I biked it home from the Farm Council Grounds in Saline on a beautiful day spring day.

Two bundled up trees - just whips, no leaves - on the back of a cargo bike

That tree has thrived since then and is now almost even with our second-story windows. Last year it had many flowers, only one of which became a pear. We watched that lonely pear until it fell and was gnawed on by an animal.

I knew that this pear tree (Blake’s Pride) was not self-fertile. But it can cross with any other pear, including the Bradford Pear, aka Callery Pear, a loathsome invasive cultivar that looks pretty, smells awful, and breaks easily. You may already know and dislike it. I just searched up “Bradford Pear” and see Missouri is set to ban it from being sold – good stuff.

Ann Arbor has many of these misbegotten trees. One grows half a block away from me and I was hoping that would be close enough to do the trick. But our yield of one pear showed it was not.

What to do? I considered trying to hand-pollinate between the Bradford Pear and my pear. Their periods of flowering overlap. But that would be tedious and I can’t reach the top half of the tree.

Then an idea came to me: I would clip a bough from the Bradford Pear and hang it in my tree. Insects would alternate between the two kinds of flowers and not know the difference.

It was free and took five minutes. And it worked! I have dozens of tiny pears set on my tree:

A close up shot of a pear bough with a few tiny developing fruits

The clipped branch’s flowers wilted after a few days, but it had been long enough for the bees to do their business.

I have a bee hotel in my driveway maybe forty feet from the tree. I credit those little solitary bees with doing the work here. They didn’t have to repay me for hosting them but it’s sweet that they did.

Bee hotels are neat. Here’s a picture I took in 2020 during COVID lockdown of a large bee hotel at the Michigan State University Children’s Garden:

a large green bee hotel labeled "Native Bee Hotel" with many pieces of wood with drilled out holes

Mine is only the size of one of those rectangular blocks on the top shelves of this hotel.

We’ll see how the harvest turns out, but I’ve solved the pollination problem!

Conifers along Miller Ave at Mack School

In 2021 I helped win a grant from the Washtenaw County Conservation District for planting native trees at Mack School (where my kids attend Ann Arbor Open). We planted the trees in 2022. Some didn’t survive, but the ones that did are looking decent. Here is a row of eastern white pines (pinus strobus) we planted in 2022, seen today in 2024:

A row of pine saplings planted along a busy street — Note the spruce at the end of the row…

They are hanging in there! I didn’t water them at all this year and they survived nonetheless. Some are only two feet tall, the biggest is close to five feet. I’ve read that once established they grow quickly and I look forward to that. Eventually the trees should provide a good visual and sound barrier against car traffic on Miller. In the spring I plan to mulch them again and maybe upsize the protective cages they are outgrowing.

Here’s a picture I took in fall 2022, when I noticed the trees – much smaller then! – were shedding yellow needles:

A one-year-old pine tree with yellow needles on the middle of its trunk and green ones elsewhere

I was concerned at first but learned this is normal behavior. White pines shed their two-year-old needles. These older needles are typically on the inside of the canopy or middle of branches.

I was removing some Glechoma hederacea (“creeping Charlie”) from around one of the little pines at drop-off this morning when a woman approached me and introduced herself as a long-time neighbor of the school. She pointed out the spruce tree at the end of the row of pines and told me that her former neighbor planted it. It had been her neighbor’s Christmas tree that year, I guess with the root ball intact, and she got approval from the school to plant it.

She estimated that her neighbor moved away a dozen years ago and planted the tree four years before that. Now children play in its shade. Look closely at the picture above and you’ll see kids have dragged a variety of sticks and stumps under its canopy to pretend with.

It was a nice reminder as I tended to these saplings of what they may eventually become. Not all of my trees will survive, but some will flourish and be enjoyed by all kinds of creatures. I’m grateful to the former neighbor who gave her Christmas tree another life.