Once-popular pear tree no longer such a gift
CLEMSON, S.C. — In the distance, beside a brick house in a tidy subdivision, the trees rose above a wooden fence, showing off all that had made the Bradford pear so alluring: They were towering and robust and, in the early spring, had white flowers that turned their limbs into perfect clouds of cotton.
But when David Coyle, a professor of forest health at Clemson University, pulled over in his pickup, he could see the monster those trees had spawned: a forbidding jungle that had consumed an open lot nearby, where the same white flowers were blooming uncontrollably in a thicket of tangled branches studded with thorns.
“When this tree gets growing somewhere, it does not take long to take over the whole thing,” said Coyle, an invasive species expert. “It just wipes everything out underneath it.”
Beginning in the 1960s, as suburbs sprouted across the South, clearing land for labyrinths of cul-de-sacs and twocar garages, Bradford pears were the trees of choice. They were easily available, could thrive in almost any soil and had an appealing shape with mahogany-red leaves that lingered deep into the fall and flowers that appeared early in the spring.
The trees’ popularity soared during a transformational time, as millions of Americans moved in pursuit of the comfort and order that suburban neighborhoods were designed to provide. “Few trees possess every desired attribute,” the gardening pages of The New York Times declared in 1964, “but the Bradford ornamental pear comes unusually close to the ideal.”
Yet the trees wound up an unwieldy menace, one that has vexed botanists, homeowners, farmers, conservationists, utility companies and government officials in a growing swath of the country across the East Coast and reaching into Texas and the Midwest.
In South Carolina, the fight has intensified. The state is in the process of barring the sale and trade of the trees, becoming the second to do so. Coyle, who tracks plants and insects that have intruded into South Carolina and tries to limit their damage, has organized “bounty” programs, in which people who bring in evidence of a slain tree get a native replacement in return.
The downsides of the Bradford pear were subtle at first. Its white flowers, as pretty as they were, emitted a fetid odor. But as the trees aged, more and more negatives emerged. They had a poor branch structure, leaving them prone to snapping and toppling in storms, sending limbs onto power lines, sidewalks and the roofs of homes.
But the most far-reaching consequence emerged as pear trees began colonizing open fields, farmland, river
banks and ditches, and rising between the pines along the highways from Georgia up through the Carolinas, edging out native species and upending ecosystems. The trees grow rapidly, climbing to as high as 15 feet within a decade. (They can ultimately reach 50 feet high and 30 feet wide.)
Officials in South Carolina added the Bradford pear to its State Plant Pest List this year and initiated a ban that goes into effect Oct. 1, 2024. Ohio is the only other state that has taken similar measures, with the callery pear, with a ban beginning in 2023. Delaware enacted more sweeping legislation this year that bars the selling, importing or planting of any invasive species.
In other states, efforts to ban the trees have faced resistance from the plant industry, researchers said, given how much nurseries rely on their hardiness in using it as rootstock.
But in South Carolina, industry leaders said that researchers convinced them that alternatives were available. The decision was also easier because, as a landscaping tree, Bradford pears had plummeted in popularity.