Invasive species Bradford pear trees are pretty, smelly, still legal in Texas
Sure, they’re pretty, and their white blooms are a harbinger of spring. But they also omit an unpleasant odor reminiscent of rotten fish — and that’s not even their biggest problem.
Bradford pear trees are a common sight throughout Texas, often planted by residents and developers for the very, very brief aesthetic appeal they offer across three weeks — a month, at best — around springtime.
Yet they bring along a host of significant problems to native ecosystems and are even listed in the Texas Invasives database. Some states have already banned the species and offer programs with incentives to remove the tree, an effort that began just over a year ago when Ohio took the lead in January 2023.
“Bradford was introduced in Maryland as the be-all, end-all and the perfect landscape tree,” Vikram Baliga, recognized as “The Plant Prof ” on social media, said in a recent reel on Instagram. “It is tolerant of a lot of soils, a lot of water conditions, a lot of climates and a lot of places . ... And while they are objectively pretty attractive a couple of weeks out of the year, all of those things that made them really good in the landscape made them ecological nightmares (in the U.S.). It turns out this tree is incredibly invasive, among a suite of other problems.”
Here’s a list of them:
Bradford pear trees crowd out native plants
Bradford pear trees are a variety of the Callery pear, which was introduced to the U.S. from Asia in the early 1900s in an attempt to fight fire blight, a disease that affected common pear trees.
As an introduced species, the Bradford pear’s expansion has been “incredibly prolific,” said Baliga, an assistant professor of practice at Texas Tech University’s Davis College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
While Bradford pear trees and cultivars of the Callery pear are typically self-infertile, meaning they cannot produce seeds within the same variety or on the same plant, they readily crosspollinate with other varieties of pear, Baliga said. This results in fruit production in subsequent generations of trees that are fertile.
“They have taken over rights of way of roadsides, and they have forced out native species,” Baliga said in the video. “They cause a lot of problems.”
They don’t support native pollinators
Beyond the issue of their overabundance and displacement of native plants, Bradford pear trees are largely
ineffective — mostly useless — in supporting native pollinators.
While Bradford pear trees do offer decent early season forage, according to Baliga, native bees and butterflies tend not to use them. Instead, the trees primarily attract honeybees.
That would be slightly more acceptable if honeybees weren’t also nonnative species. Introduced to the U.S. in the 1600s, essentially as livestock, honeybees pose a risk of outcompeting native bee populations for forage and can spread disease among bees. And because they have a broader diet than native bee species, honeybees can contribute to the reproduction and spread of invasive plant species, such as the Bradford pear tree — perpetuating an endless cycle of fostering growth among invasive species populations.
“Native bees, in general, don’t really love these,” Baliga said in the video. “Their fruits are small, hard, inedible, and even though they are foraged on by some birds and other wildlife, they’re carried off. Then the seeds, when they’re fertile, will drop all over the place. And you get — guess what? — more Bradford pears.”
They smell really bad
Over the years, there have been numerous comparisons made to the pungent odor of the Bradford pear tree — and they’re universally gross.
“The flowers have been described as fish or rotting meat or something else that I can’t talk about on here without getting in trouble,” Baliga joked, noting that viewers could quickly learn in the comments.
The smell lingers for as long as the flowers do.
They can cause a lot of damage
While it’s commonly known that Bradford pear trees emit a foul odor and compete with native plants, some people might be unaware that the trees also cause significant damage to private property.
Bradford pears are notorious for their weak wood and poorly formed branch angles, Baliga explained. The narrow angles can cause branches to become trapped, leading to breakage.
Additionally, the weak wood is not good at withstanding ice storms or even high winds. While it might be favorable for woodworking, it poses risks to the tree’s structural integrity during extreme weather conditions.
“These trees will fall apart; they’ve been known to crash into cars and fences and your dog, if it’s too slow,” Baliga said. “So while this is objectively a reasonably attractive tree, it is not worth the ecological problems that it causes and the problems to the urban and home landscape.
“Friends don’t let friends plant Bradford pears. Just don’t do it,” Baliga added.