Don, I appreciate so very much your efforts to help me - you made my day with you helpfulness and good advice! I will hightail it to the nursery to purchase the dwarf bare root and plant it asap. I would appreciate your advice about a few questions that come to mind now. You advised planting as soon as possible. I imagine you don't mean I should skip the step of soaking the roots in water for 18-24 hours but could you let me know if I'm right in this assumption? I tried searching this site for bare root planting instructions, and all I could find was that I should shape a cone of soil for roots to rest on then gently tamp down the soil around them, and to mulch 2-4" except around the trunk. Someone by phone said to give it 1" of water per week, watering once a week unless its very dry weather then twice a week. As I am pushing it to plant so late in the season, do you have anything to add to those instructions to give it my best shot? I was told the rootstock is OH/F Old Home X Farmingdale and that it is good for heavy soils, which would be a good thing because we have clay soil. Would you suggest any amendments for the hole - I usually add bagged compost and sometimes peat? How large would you suggest a hole to amend the soil around the tree? Is there any problem with planting right over the spot where the tree was just cut down, as they did not dig out roots extensively? I read that some very dwarfing rootstocks provide weak root systems and that also you need to water those frequently, but when I asked about this the nursery said this rootstock is not one of those very dwarfing varieties, Do you think I need to be concerned about this for this rootstock, as I'm guessing they have an interest in selling it and so am not sure if that affects the answer they gave me. When I go to the nursery I may be tempted to also buy the standard F.B. that they said looks like it was potted from bare roots about 3 weeks ago and is leafing out. Do you have any thoughts as to the chances of success in planting a tree at that stage of growth? Someone suggested keeping it in the pot till it goes dormant in the fall then planting it then, to prevent transplant shock now. If buying it have some good chance of success, would you suggest planting it now or in the fall? I wonder also whether its possible to train a standard tree to keep it close to the size of a semi-dwarf as that would work better in my yard.? If you are able to help with any of these questions I would once again be deeply grateful for your input. Mary

You might want to look at this article http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/gagarden/msg041309538748.html A callery pear for example could be top grafted over to another variety of large pear which is what I would do. It is undesirable for them to make fruit aka produce seed because they are known to be invasive. They are very useful as a root stock in my location. Callery pears will pollinate many varieties of pears but I'm not sure if it will pollinate your neighbors. If It does act as a pollinator remember the neighbors tree only will get the larger fruit. Callery pear tree fruit will always be small . The next generation of callery seeds might make larger fruited unique varieties when the trees were grown from seed as shown in the picture above. Those trees in the above picture were not intentionally grown but rather grew by accident on a farm in my area. Some day work may be done to use callery to breed better pears. In the late 1800's the kieffer pear was grown from a cross between the sand pear and European pear so natural crosses do happen across species. Garber is another sand pear hybrid highly resistant to fire blight. Hybrid pears are fascinating because of their disease resistance. This post was edited by ClarkinKS on Fri, Jan 2, 15 at 0:07

With that height and the very glossy foliage, I'd suspect a callery pear, Pyrus calleryana. While these are intended to a be an ornamental (fruitless) pear, they most certainly are not as they cross pollinate freely with any other genotype (which accounts for this species invasive status across a major portion of the country). If it is, the fruit will remain very small and are not really edible. And it is a tree that you should consider removing, both because of its widespread invasive potential as well as its reputation for being weak wooded and prone to a lot of damage from winds, snow and ice.

Fruit trees can and often should be hard pruned, especially if they have been neglected for awhile. If the tree is healthy and productive (is it??), there is really no reason to remove. One doesn't prune fruit bearing trees in the same manner as one prunes ornamentals and it is not a process that is easily described. Bartletts are spur bearers and that takes some knowledge to understand and encourage. You might find a YouTube video or two that does a good job of explaining and illustrating the process (be careful with these - most are garbage) but a hands-on training class with someone experienced in this process would be better. Check with a local nursery to see if they have anyone they recommend.