I was driving through a housing estate earlier on today, and a flood of colour caught my attention enough for me to pull over and have a closer look. I’m glad I did, as what drew my attention was a quite awesome pear tree (Pyrus sp.), clearly mature, and actually rather massive. Old storm damage and the open-grown setting (nothing blocks light to its south) have led to the tree becoming wider than it is tall, and it has got a serious amount of leaves and thus has great photosynthetic potential. Amenity value in ornamental cultivars is often discussed, though the huge value of this large pear tree (pre-dating the housing estate, and probably grown for fruit) in the visual sense, and ecological sense (the number of insects that must frequent this tree is most likely very high), is not even up for debate.
I hope the photos below give some sort of indication as to how lovely the tree was, and I stress that this was indeed a massive tree. For a pear, that is. Some others are dotted around, but not at all of this stature.
Arboriculture 