Early autumn colour

This is our Manchurian Pear (Pyrus ussuriensis), a member of the Rosaceae family. All pears are members of the rose family, which is probably not such a well-known fact.

The sun was catching this branch perfectly today, and this is straight from the camera with some light cropping. The photo needed no improvement being exactly how the tree looked.

More colour!

Our tree is around 15 years old and has grown much bigger than the nursery predicted. They said about 8 metres tall and ours is already huge at 10 metres tall and 8 metres wide! And still growing steadily - being nowhere near full maturity.

In Australia it is an extremely popular medium-sized garden tree that flowers very early in spring and has bright autumn leaf colour that is held well on the branches.

It has white flowers about 3 cm across in early spring, produced from its pink buds. It is one of the first ornamental pears to flower in spring. This tree is the biggest tree in our garden and one of my favourite trees. I only wished it was a fruiting tree, bearing pears! Oh well, you can't have everything.