A Tree That Was Once the Suburban Ideal Has Morphed Into an Unstoppable Villain [View all]

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A Tree That Was Once the Suburban Ideal Has Morphed Into an Unstoppable Villain
The Bradford pear, hugely popular when suburbs were developed, contributed to an invasion of trees conquering nearly anywhere it lands. South Carolina is stepping up its fight against
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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,” Professor Coyle, an invasive species expert, said. “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 two-car 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.

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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.)

“You can’t miss it,” said Tim Rogers, the general manager of a company that sells plants and supplies to landscaping companies. “It’s everywhere.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/us/bradford-pear-tree-south-carolina.html