PSA: Bradford Pear trees

[ohiobrewtus]

Beautiful trees, right?

http://huntsville.about.com/library/graphics/bradford10.jpg

So I planted 4 of these along the south end of our lot roughly 4 years ago. I've seen what they look like fully matured and they look amazing for a few weeks of the year when they bloom, and always look good otherwise as well.

4 years of growth on the trunks got to be a bit too much and since I've been spending the last couple of weeks working on landscaping projects anyway, I thought I'd go out and clean them up a bit and HOLY FUCKING SHIT THESE THINGS GROW SPIKES OF DEATH! Not small thorns, but spikes the size of the shit you see on the ball and chain weapons from the second Matrix movie. We're talking some serious King Arthur shit here.

Apparently I'm semi-retarded, because it took 5 or 20 puncture wounds to my fingers before I decided to go get some damn gloves.

Fuck the trees! :)

[Evan!]

Also, the flowers, while pretty, are stinky almost like ginkgos.

Also, they like to put their growth energy into getting nice and big above the ground, but are fucking slackers when it comes to developing a robust root structure, so they become top-heavy with no foundation, and one day a windstorm or snowstorm comes through and they're all laying on their sides.

[zoebisch01]

Selection, selection, selection :D

Talk about stinky flowers, anyone else have Chestnuts? hehehe

We do have a variety of Locust that grows all over the place. It has thorns, not huge but very robust. The good thing is they are only on the top portion of growth so when the tree gets bigger the trunk doesn't have them and they are not an issue. One of the most amazing things though is that during mid-spring when the flowers on those trees open up (which are really pretty in their own right) they send out this dank, dense perfume that fills the night sky. The best I can describe it is something akin to grape gum mixed with Jasmine, it's got that seductive, intriguing, fruity aroma where you can just sit there and smell it for hours even though it's pretty much overwhelming. I took some blossoms and dried them in hopes of mixing it with some green tea but they didn't seem to hold the aroma :(.

[christo]

Hopefully you have all male trees as well. The feminine Bradford Pear dumps tons of "fruit" - marble sized "pears"/berries for about 2-3 months in late summer/early fall. Have ruined the paint jobs on two cars.

In addition to no root structure, they also produce weak branch structure, virtually guaranteeing that you will have at some point a split trunk. When you prune, you want to take out the highly angled branches and open up the interior of the tree some for movement of the other branches.

My dad is a Landscape Architect and called these things the abomination of all "man-made" trees.