Copper pear grows slowly and rarely exceeds five meters in height. This characteristic, its luxuriant blooms and the beautiful coloring of the leaves in spring and autumn make the rock pear a popular ornamental tree in our gardens.
Autumn is the best time to thin out the copper pear pear
Copper pear is also called currant tree. Its Latin name is Amelanchier lamarckii and is due to the French botanist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. It is one of the pome fruit plants and originally comes from North America.
Copper pear flowers profusely in white from April to June. However, the plant owes its popularity primarily to the copper-red foliage color that the young leaves have in spring. In the course of the summer, the leaves turn green, only to shine again in the most beautiful shades of yellow and orange in autumn.
Applicable cutting styles
The slow-growing rock pear naturally has an upright tree or shrub-like habit. Regular pruning is therefore hardly necessary. The following types of pruning are suitable for this type of wood:
- Plant pruning to restore balance between crown and roots after planting,
- Thinning cut to remove branches that have grown too densely,
- rejuvenation pruning for old trees,
- possibly the so-called Pruning up to give a shrub the shape of a standard.
cutting time
Planting pruning is carried out immediately after planting, which should preferably take place in spring or autumn. Thinning out and limbing up is best done in autumn/winter, when the trees are leafless and easily recognizable. Spring (May), on the other hand, is the best time for the rejuvenation cut, whereby the measure is spread over a total of three years. Every year, a third of the branches are severely shortened, so that there is an overall rejuvenation in the third year.
tips
The pleasantly sweet-tasting fruits of the copper pear are only the size of a pea, but they also shine in bright crimson and, as they ripen, in deep blue to blue-black.