I believe you are describing cedar apple rust with the orange sprouting bodies you usually find in the second year of the gall on the twigs of its host cedar.
You're finding them on the pear tree?
got to go google about that

We've had this problem in our South Durham neighborhood for a few years. The browning and dropping of leaves appear to be related to the rust infection as the nodes of the affected leaves are swollen and show the rusty fungal tubes.

From what we've read about the cedar rusts, the cedar-quince rust, whose cankers can persist in a perennial manner, could be the cause.

We've tried to control the visible symptoms by spraying the lower branches: in the spring of 2013 with copper and this spring with captan (after having pruned the visible canker swellings in the winter) - but without success. We sprayed after the flower petals dropped and the fresh green growth (showing no rust symptoms yet) developed - this year sooner than last year. Maybe spraying has to start even earlier (at bud stage?) and be applied more than once?

CasaLester, that is not very encouraging. This is the first time I've seen anything as pervasive as this. I've had what I think of as cedar apple rust or something related on my tree before, but it hasn't caused leaf drop, that I can recall. Maybe this will be what these trees have now and they'll all end up gone!

From what I've seen in roadside Bradford Pear trees the disease looks just like the Cedar Quince Rust I have in my yard - on Quince and Serviceberries. I also see it in the woods around my house on wild Serviceberries. I spray and this year I sprayed like a mad man and I started way early in the winter trying to get in front of this disease and Fireblight. This year the disease's are winning the war. I will most likely have to chop down all my Quince trees - waaaaaaaaa!

From what I've read all these fungal diseases exist on the twigs in all the trees in the area. The disease only bothers certain types of trees but it can park itself on any tree so you would have to spray all the branches of all the trees anywhere near your orchard or fruit trees. Wind, rain and pollinating insects carry it from one tree to the next. In the Spring when the temps are cool to warm and the winds are up and it often rains - we see a lot of it. Once the daytime temps get above 85 degrees it stops spreading, but that is when it "blooms" and usually kills the small stems it has infected.

I haven't been able to find resistant varieties of Quince or Serviceberries. I have been having some success with resistant Apples and Pears (they show less disease but they are not immune).

Perhaps we're doomed to the punishment by Mother Nature for the proliferation of homes studded by Bradfords in place of family farms with stands of forest between the fields. Who knows..
I have one serviceberry that seems bird planted. It blooms nicely, forms a few berries that disappear to birds or squirrels. It stands near a cherry mangled with all sorts of galls but that cherry blooms each spring and I don't care if it doesn't fruit, it feeds the eyes.

My only concern with these trees is that they are now cross-breeding and becoming invasive. Lots of open fields are now being invaded with these trees. I really wish people would stop planting these invasive trees. One of the worst commercially available plants.

And, that pollen viable or sterile is a potent allergen to many people I know.
Bradfords filled the niche for a medium sized, dependably shaped, easy to install street tree for developments. Like every other over-used plant material, nature intercedes to foil man's intent. Man responds with chemicals or laboratory efforts in genetic modifications.
One fully grown blooming Bradford literally pops as an accent to landscape.
A pair in every new yard I consider thoughtless excess.

As WhitewaterVol said, it is an invasive tree.

I have to cut down hundreds in my pasture every year.

ticksmom419 could you mail me a cutting from a tree that has the disease? ;)

Wertach, you could visit any Bradford Pear in Raleigh, from what I can tell. I think my tree may actually be sterile. I have never seen little volunteers from it. I do like it, but it's been with us since our house was built, so it's about 15 years old and I always wonder how long it will last. We will plant something else in its place whenever it goes.

Except for one serious blunder ("best of all, has virtually no insect or disease problems"), the article below explains in more detail the issues with Bradford pears (Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford'), of which there are many: structural weakness of the branching pattern, invasiveness of cross-pollinated seeds, and a relatively short life span ("few of them living past the age of 30").

Here is a link that might be useful: Bradford Pear: A Mixed Blessing in the Landscape

ticksmom419 I was joking about sending me a cutting! Didn't you see the wink? ;)

As CasaLester's link shows, they are very invasive. I have never saw any little volunteers around the trees in other folks yards either. The closest intentionally planted BP's that I know of are almost a mile away.

But I sure have a lot of them in my pasture!

I should have took a pic last week before I mowed them down with my bush hog. They were 2' tall towering over my fescue.

I mowed them in May and they have came back that quick!

Good Day,

I am new...and late to this thread. I am in VA & I have three pears, which I will assume are Bradfords. They are approximately 25 yrs old and have displayed the orange pollen for the fist time this past spring. It was pollen as intense as the 80' pines produce...just bright orange instead of yellow/green.

They look weak and/or sick. In the past the foliage was dense, waxy and didn't drop until shortly before spring bloom. Now you can see sky through the branches, it has been dropping dry brown leaves all summer and hasn't produce many faux fruit.

My understanding of the structure of a tree is "trunk, limbs branches, leaves"...my brother's Bradfords, in St, Louis, are about as old as mine but this year his look like the leaves are attached to the limbs....almost like it doesn't have branches.

Are these related problems?

This is the first I've heard of this cedar quince rust. Having two huge Bradfords in my front yard affected for at least 3 years, my research indicated that it was fire blight. Blackened leaves on at least a quarter of the trees. They still bloom though.

Am I wrong?

Fire blight is a bacterial, not fungal, disease. You can tell the difference in spring before the affected leaves turn black (which is the final stage and looks similar for both diseases). A fungal disease, like the cedar quince rust, will show on leaf nodes, stems, and fruits multiple small tubes will orange tips - this is how the fungus produces spores.

TidewaterTriska, I read that 25 years is pretty aged for Bradfords. In their declining years (like people) they can't fight off infections, bacterial or viral, without a lot of costly care and close supervision to catch problems early.

Fruit growers in your areas would undoubtedly appreciate your getting rid of those infected trees asap, preferably by burning.

Might be a good idea to do it before your agricultural extension service gets wind of this unhandled problem.

Hasn't it occurred to you all that fruit trees are food producers, and that diseases like this raise the cost of food for everyone?

A Bradford Pear is one sorry tree. They rot from the inside and will easily break during an ice storm. They are invasive and will enter agriculture areas. They produce thorns. I punctured four tractor tires, last week, while bush hogging an area.

I just found this thread.
I manage an apple orchard in north Durham County (Bahama to be exact). My apple varieties are mostly heirloom and therefore susceptible to most diseases. I started the orchard in 2007 and this year is the absolute worst year for fireblight. I've had fireblight strikes in the past but have been able to keep them at bay by pruning out the strikes and spraying streptomycin. Streptomycin is an antibiotic spray. It is usually effective but in years where fireblight is so bad, the spray only works a little.
This is also the first year I have noticed bradford pear trees affected by fireblight. I can't explain it and don't understand why. I've asked the local ag extension folks but they don't know. The bradford pear trees in my area (and I have noticed them everywhere in central NC) are absolutely blackened by FB. Some of them will die, most of them will suffer severe structure loss. I have lost 1/3 of my apple trees. And it isn't cedar apple rust, I spray for that, too.
I wish I had better news and a better explanation. Frankly, I hope it kills all the bradford pears. I'd be cool with that.

I was told that most of the apple/pear diseases require a certain range of temperatures to cause them to "bloom" and therefore spread to other trees. The perfect storm of conditions happen most often in the Spring - damp and wet weather, windy, between 45 and 85 degrees (I'm guessing that was the magic numbers). Once the daytime temps start reaching the mid 80's you often don't see so much of the disease. But this summer had plenty of weekends where the daytime high were only in the 70's and I'm guessing that those conditions have made these diseases show up a lot more this year.

It seems that this year our local Bradford pears are less affected by this rust disease. The only symptoms we see so far are a few infected fruits, but no swellings of nodes on twigs. The photo below shows an infected (red circle) and uninfected (green circle) fruit side by side. Last year there weren't even any uninfected fruits.

A Bradford pear just split about two weeks ago on our neighbor's property barely missing the deck. It was during one of the thunderstorms with some strong winds, but nothing extraordinary, so it must have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

The landscaping "professionals" have blessed our property with one Bradford pear as well, and after doing cost-benefit analysis we decided that the risk of waiting for force majeure and the hassle of removing the tree, even preemptively, would be much more inconvenient than trying to save it by bracing according to this excellent presentation. We'll update on this project soon.

Just cut it down before it spreads seed far and wide! You will be doing everyone in your neighborhood and far beyond a favor. They are nothing but invasive weed trees!

Hopefully, we can sleep peacefully now. We put three 5/8" rods and four 1/2" rods to brace the three potential splits in our Bradford pear.