[beezle]

Was on HOA board where we had a road with quite a few of these trees. They were a fortune to prune because of the numerous small branches at higher reaches. As a board, we actually hoped they would come down in storms so we could replace with something more appropriate without the take down cost (and resident complaints).

Another unqiue thing is during the summer it was not uncommon for a branch to suddenly explode - apparently some type of moisture/vapor build up in the interior.

[echelon]

Bradford pears were all the rage in the 1990s to 2000s. At one point HOAs thought these were the best tree. Local gardens and nurseries would sell lots of them to landscapers and homeowners.

To this day, they're all over my home state of Georgia. And they're still selected for new landscaping.

They did have a few pros:

- Look great in the spring

- Huge, lush, thick canopy in the summer

- Fast growing

But there are way too many problems:

- Kills all the grass underneath them from shade and root structure

- Seedlings and root offshoots are pervasive pests

- Produces a lot of fruit, and it's toxic to humans and dogs. It smells bad and can smear if you step on it

- Trees only live 7 - 15 years, and they leave a gnarly root system to deal with.

- Extremely prone to falling over during winds or tornadoes. Can easily damage fences, housing, etc. We had to replace our fence once because of one. Even small storms can bring down the older trees.

- And of course, everyone knows how awful they smell in the spring

[ethbr1]

I think this takes the cake for "first invasive species I've seen populate over my lifespan."

Just moved back to GA after 3 years away and asked folks what all the white-blossoming trees in meadows are this spring, as don't remember seeing so many blossoms previously.

Cherries (closest blossom I know) aren't that fruitful / clustering. Dogwoods look completely different.

> Extremely prone to falling over during winds or tornadoes.

Also kids climbing on them, from childhood experience. Weak wood.

[pvaldes]

A few observations:

Japanese Cherries can be much more packed with flowers than this pear (It depends on the cultivar). Both Cherries and Dogwoods are royalty on gardens, but both deploy to much wider structures that can be low branched and tend to hang searching the floor, so this Pyrus is still pretty much unbeatable for narrow streets. Palms have their own problems, like thorns, but are "designed" for streets with extremely windy areas. The problem is that palms don't survive the same frost than pears can.

There are maybe five or ten trees so narrow in their category that, unlike conifers, bring blossoms, clean relatively dry fruits, and excellent fall colour in snowy areas. Some are among the most alien things that you can have in a garden.

And all that grows in such acute angles is prone to catastrophic cracks for wind damage. It comes in the package.

Having a Dogwood that would grow fastigiate retaining the "dog wood" part, would be a revolution, but is not available at this moment (and probably will never be). Dogwoods love the 90 degrees angle. I have a maple 'Tsukasa Silhouette' that would look great, but is too small, too expensive and too delicate to be used as that.

Pears are still one of the tastier fruits in a garden, not ornamental royalty, but food royalty for sure. I just ignore the short interval of smell as a necessary tax to pay.

[t-3]

There are some small ornamental apples that have been in my yard for decades that look very similar dogwood. No idea about the cultivar or anything (previous owner planted them AFAIK), but they are beautiful with reddish-pink leaves and white blossoms.

[pvaldes]

Some kind of Malus floribunda probably, but check also the plum Prunus cerasifera pisardii for comparison, and the serviceberry.

Cydonia oblonga has bigger flowers and in some way can remind dogwoods or even some magnolias when in blossom.

[Turing_Machine]

Unfortunately Bradford pears are toxic to humans (though not birds).

[t-3]

Everything I've found while googling about this says that they are not toxic, they just don't taste very good and are very hard.

[pvaldes]

As toxic like apples probably. In a small fruit that is easy to ingest whole nobody would take care of removing the seeds. Apple seeds have cyanide so if you eat a lot is unpleasant

[saalweachter]

Marmarated beetles for me.

[beezle]

From earlier response, the HOA I mentioned was along Long Island Sound so much more northerly. Our trees were a good 30+ years old. They were somewhat sheltered from high winds, especially when younger, by the nature of the buildings (two story row houses). It wasn't until the canopy reached a fair bit over the rooflines that they really started coming down in thunderstorms. That no parked cars were crushed was pretty much a miracle.

And spot on with the no grass underneath...and the homeowner complaints about dirt in front of their units ("if you pay to take it down and replace, we'll let you!")

[cmpalmer52]

It doesn’t even take wind or storms, if they get too big/spread out, they’ll sometimes just spontaneously split down the middle (one in our backyard pulled this trick and one in our front yard, but we were planning on cutting them down anyway - planted by builders and/or previous residents).

[lotsofpulp]

> Local gardens and nurseries would sell lots of them to landscapers and homeowners.

They still do. It’s the cheapest bang for the buck tree for large scale developers across the entire US.

[datavirtue]

I have some type of pear tree in my front yard that look identical but they don't have any of these drawbacks.

[xp84]

Wow, that's pretty wild that those cons didn't dissuade people from propagating them deliberately!

[olliej]

IIRC they were introduced aggressively as being a non-propagating, non fruiting tree or something, both of which turned out to be false, but by the time people realized this it was far too late :-/

Reminds me of SF planting Pōhutakawas everywhere - an NZ native tree that requires little water, don't fall over, don't fruit, etc. Except as any NZer could tell you, the reason they don't fall over is that they're evolved to grow on/around cliffs and loose earth, so they go all in on strong roots. Which mean constantly breaking roads and sidewalks. yay!

Also while they don't fruit they produce a tonne of flowers that produce a tonne of cruft on the ground :-/

[bombcar]

Eucalyptus in southern California; railroads thought they'd be great for building ties out of, they're not, and they're extremely flammable and explode.

[genewitch]

I always heard that burning eucalyptus wood was toxic, but now i'm wondering if someone got their signals crossed because pressure treated wood and i think creosote treated wood are toxic when burned, too? I heard it as a teen, at school they took down a couple 100' eucalyptus and said we couldn't have a bonfire because of that reason.

[bombcar]

It might be, all I remember is that they explode during fires which make the fires spread faster or something. They burn really well.

[flutas]

They also smell like someone took a rotting fish, dunked it in sewage and decided to roast it in the sun for a few days.

They're everywhere where I live, and it's so bad.

[dvirsky]

These are the same trees known as Cum Trees, right?

My neighbors have a couple, I didn't know these before moving to the US, and the first time I smelled them was... something.

[akira2501]

I thought that was the Linden tree.[0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m-8l3V38Ps

[FredPret]

Always the first thing that come to mind when smelly trees "come up"

[lo_zamoyski]

Linden trees have a unique scent, but I never thought it was repulsive or even remotely associated with the kinds of things people associate it with.

[b112]

What people eat, affects how they smell and their.. um, liquids.

[davemp]

That reminds me of when I asked an arborist why the tree they were taking down was called a “Piss Oak”. They said wait until we drop it and you won’t have to ask. Sure enough the entire area smelled like urine for a couple hrs after they felled the tree.

[Loughla]

Do you mean Piss Elm? I've never heard of an oak with that quality.

[davemp]

I believe the polite common name is “Pin Oak” [1] a fast growing, short lived, and relatively red oak. Supposedly the smell comes from a bacterial infection that afflicts most of the Pin Oak population.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_palustris

[Loughla]

That's wild. I have cut hundreds of pin oaks and have never encountered that. I learned something!

[TeMPOraL]

I've never been very fond of nature to begin with[0], but I never imagined becoming disgusted by trees. That's until seeing some four different tree species mentioned in this thread, whose common characteristic seems to be the aura of shite and decay that takes years or decades to break through people's desperate need to pretend that since it is nature and handles well, it must be good.

--

[0] - Specifically at human/humane, live in and breathe in and admire it scale. I'm very fond of nature at population scale, and at molecular scale, both of which present interesting puzzles and applications.

[neilv]

At least one street here got lined with those. A witty lesbian friend I was walking with identified the scent immediately, so at least the trees were good for some jokes.

[exe34]

I don't think wit is how she identified it.

[LambdaComplex]

They sure are

[BeFlatXIII]

Piperidine Trees, if you spent too much time in an undergrad chem lab.

[QuercusMax]

We had one in front of our house at one point, and the first year it bloomed we thought there was a dead animal under the house.

Some people say they smell like bleach and/or semen as well. I'd rather have Durian than Bradford pear.

[pvaldes]

Common Pear trees have also this fish smell. Everything pollinated by flies has an offensive smell in one or other way. This is bad but can be desirable at the same time (no wasps or bees in the narrow streets).

[swalling]

The other one that smells horrible are female gingko trees. The fruits smell like rancid butter or garbage.

These days you can really only buy the male ones but older plantings are awful. https://www.purdue.edu/fnr/extension/ginkgo-stinkgo-are-boys...

[scns]

We have a street lined with those. To me it smells like vomit.

[TheHypnotist]

I have one in my yard and it doesn't smell at all. It also doesn't produce fruit.

[silisili]

My high school had a bunch of these. All the kids called them CumDrop trees, for good reason.

[cafard]

Where was this? In Maryland they would break, a lot, but I never heard of them exploding. I don't think the people in our development loved them. Certainly I had seen a few too many across somebody's lawn or walk.

[beezle]

Southern CT near the sound. Yes it would happen with some of the wide, low branches. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like popcorn, maybe once every other year.