Is a callery pear (bradford pear) a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Think hard about it — callery pear (bradford pear) is on the hazard list in central Indiana. Indiana has NOT banned Callery pear statewide — the DNR's current Terrestrial Plant Rule (312 IAC 18-3-25) still lists 44 prohibited species and Callery pear is not among them; an amendment adding it alongside Norway maple and burning bush has been proposed since 2021 and remains pending. Some Indiana cities act on their own (South Bend prohibits it locally, Bloomington disallows it in new development) and neighboring Ohio's statewide ban took effect in 2023, so expect the rule to change but do not tell a customer the tree is currently illegal to own here.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
Small hard brown fruits, roughly pea to marble sized, drop through fall, get tracked indoors, and are carried by birds into every fencerow within a few hundred yards. Spring lays down a heavy carpet of white petals, and that same bloom is the notorious smell, which is what makes plenty of homeowners want it gone long before it becomes a hazard.
Where to keep it away from
Callery pear roots are modest — it is not a sidewalk lifter or a sewer problem, so root complaints are rare. The root issue is regeneration: cut stumps and severed roots resprout aggressively, and bird-spread seedlings come up thorny, so a removal without stump grinding or a cut-stump herbicide treatment simply converts one tree into a multi-stem thicket.
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