Hello,
The rusty colored spots may be pear trellis rust which has become common. All leaves turning brown and crinkly  could be some sort of root rot or damage from a chemical, such as lawn sprays or tree sprays.

Please take a picture of the whole tree, from root zone to top. And take a picture about 10 inches away showing closeup of a branch with leaves and buds.  You can attach up to 3 pictures per update to your question, and each picture can be up to 8mb in size.

And, please give us information on what has been applied in the area to nearby lawns, gardens and the tree itself in the last several weeks or whenever this year’s problem began. If you know about when each product was applied, that is helpful, too.

hanks for getting back to me.  Attached are 3 photos of the pear trees.  A full shot of the mature tree and a close up of it.  And then a full shot of the 2 year old Moonglow pear tree.

Also, as for spraying, back in March, after pruning them, they were sprayed with a Bonide All Seasons dormant oil. Then, just last week  (5/13/26) after petal fall, I sprayed a combination of Bonide Fruit Tree Spray (70% cold pressed Neem oil) and Captain Jack's DeadBug Brew (.5% spinosad (a mixture of Spinosyn A and Spinosad D).  This was sprayed on all of my apple and pear trees.  All of my apples and my 4 year of Bartlett pear are all fine. It's just these 2 pear trees that are struggling.  The leaves are brown, crisp, and crumbling.  

Thanks for any help, suggestions, or advice.

Jim 

Nashville, Michigan, Barry County

Hello Jim,

Based on the patterns here this looks like it's a spray related injury. What time of day did you spray? Oils like neem, especially in hotter conditions, can be phytotoxic. Was the spray mixed differently between these two trees and the other trees? Fire blight doesn't quite look like this. I notice that there were no fungicides used and pear scab can look similar to some of the damage we're seeing, but I wouldn't expect scab to be as wide spread.

I sprayed in the early evening.  It's been rather cool around here so it was probably in the 60's at best. I mixed the spray up in my pull behind sprayer like i've done for years.  I mixed about 15 gallons and had left over after doing all 19 fruit trees.  I have 3 pears and 13 apples in this orchard and 3 other apples in another area all of various ages from 2-20 years old. All of the fruit trees are fine except for these two.  The 3rd pear is a bartlett and about 4 years old.  It is about 20 feet from the older, taller pear and it has no issues at all.  Also, the affected pear's leaves are crumbling and dry.  It's my guess that these trees won't be able to produce enough energy to survive, especially the little one.  

Hi Jim,

Since I can't really tell from the pictures your next step should be to submit samples to the plant and pest id lab: https://www.canr.msu.edu/pestid/

There are instructions on the site on how to submit a sample. If it's a disease problem they should be able to identify it for you.