The Bradford pear: Oklahoma’s worst tree, or just misunderstood?
Tree with white blooms has become invasive species
Cursed for its dense yet brittle branches that break off after ice storms and blamed for springtime allergies, the Bradford pear may be one of Oklahoma’s most despised trees.
The ornamental blooming trees with sour-smelling flowers were initially thought to be sterile, but the Bradford has since become an invasive species in Oklahoma, sprouting up in clumps along fence lines and in fields.
Wild Bradford pear started to be a problem in Oklahoma about 10 years ago and are rapidly expanding beyond shopping mall parking lots and suburban front lawns, said Karen Hickman, professor of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University. Hickman is also a founding member and past-president of the Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council.
“It’s escaped and now it’s running rampant,” Hickman said. “Some people consider it as bad as eastern red cedar — it’s another person’s feral hog.”
Invasive species
The Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council has included Bradford pear on its watchlist for invasive species.
In Oklahoma, the Bradford pear has begun to spread to land that was once open prairie, altering the natural landscape said Dwayne Elmore, OSU Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist and Bollenbach Chair in Wildlife Biology.
Elmore has also received calls from managers of shopping malls and other commercial properties, where Bradford pear has become a popular tree for parking lots.
In late summer and early fall, Bradford pears in shopping center parking lots can attract masses of migrating birds. The dense architecture of the Bradford pear branches provide ideal cover for grackles and starlings from owls and other predators.
“These birds congregate in trees that are in the ... parking lot and defecate all over cars,” Elmore said. “They are loud,
annoying and it’s a public health risk.”
Common scapegoat
Although the Bradford is a common scapegoat for Oklahoman springtime allergies, the more likely culprits are eastern red cedar or other plants that produce wind-borne pollen, Elmore said.
“Bradford pear is insect-pollinated and I don’t think that would cause allergens — that would really be quite shocking if it did,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture cultivated the Bradford pear in the 1960s from the Callery pear, a tree native to China and Vietnam. With its dense white blooms in late winter and early spring and colorful fall foliage, the Bradford soon became a popular ornamental tree across the United States.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the Bradford pear had become one of the most popular ornamental trees in the United States, said Brian Dougherty, director of parks and public spaces initiative at Oklahoma City Community Foundation.
“There’s is no perfect tree, but it was a very tough tree and an adaptable tree,” Dougherty said.
A recent inventory of trees growing in Oklahoma City parks — completed by the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, Oklahoma Forestry Service and the city — found 542 growing in city parks, or about 2.6 percent of the total park tree population. The number of Bradford pears growing in Oklahoma City parks has probably dwindled by about half in recent years as the species loses popularity and the existing Bradfords age and die, Dougherty said.
Reputation undeserved?
Kelly Marcum, coowner of Marcum’s Nursery in Oklahoma City, believes the Bradford has gotten an undeserved bad reputation over the years and is really just misunderstood.
“They do good here and will almost grow in concrete,” Marcum said, “It’s a great tree in a lot of ways.”
Bradford pears thrive in Oklahoma’s sometimes challenging climate and can be an attractive lowmaintenance ornamental tree with proper pruning, Marcum said.
“People don’t keep them thinned out — if people kept the branches from crossing each other, they wouldn’t break off,” he said.
And yet, the Bradford pear’s popularity in Oklahoma in recent years has so dwindled, so that Marcum’s Nursery has stopped growing them at its tree farm near Goldsby in favor of sturdier, lesshated pear varieties.
Hickman encourages people who enjoy flowering trees to chose a species that is less prone to being toppled by ice storms and wind, such as the Oklahoma redbud.
“We always encourage people to plant trees that are native,” she said.