Bradford pear trees have several undesirable qualities you may want to avoid.
Edward Palm / Getty Images
Bradford pear trees are the trees people love to hate.
Plus, how beautiful are those white flowers?
Credit:Edward Palm / Getty Images
Here’s what I learned.
In fact, it’s so popular that the two terms are pretty much used interchangeably by the public.
It was a favorite of landscapers and municipal planners alike for several reasons.
Credit:Susan A. Roth
The trees look gorgeous whencovered in white flowers in springand offer pretty fall foliage as well.
Bradford pear trees grow fast and take any kind of soil without complaint.
And at first, they were pest-resistant and disease-free.
But before long, the tree’s shortcomings started to cause problems.
The Bradford pear tree was supposed to be small but ended up growing 40 to 50 feet tall.
Other flaws are harder to ignore.
If astorm doesn’t make a wreck of the tree, the poorly structured branches do it themselves.
The trees can literally fall apart after 20 years.
Plus, it stillhad great fall foliagea mix of burgundy and yellow in mid-November after everything else was finished.
As for the flowers, I planted mine behind the garage, so I never noticed a smell.
One thing I did notice was fruit.
After 10 barren years, my fruitless pear tree suddenly became a mother.
As it turns out, sterile trees can still produce fruit if there’s a cross-pollinator nearby.
If you’ve got one,consider cutting it down(it makes good firewood!)
and replacing it with a better-behaved, less-problematic flowering tree.
Plus many cities are encouraging residents to remove these trees.
For a fee, a local tree service should be able to help you remove it.
The best time to do this is early in the season, before the tree starts producing berries.
Some people have compared the odor of Bradford pear flowers to rotten fish.
Others have compared it to fecal matter.
The smell lingers until the blooms fall to the ground.
