
The Bradford Pear Fiasco - rfreytag
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/how-we-turned-the-bradford-pear-into-a-monster/2018/09/14/f29c8f68-91b6-11e8-b769-e3fff17f0689_story.html
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dqv
I'm surprised they didn't mention that these trees STINK.

Edit: Looks like it was mentioned in the comment section in the article.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/bradford-pear-tree-semen-
sex...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bradford-pear-tree-semen-sex-
smell-2013-4)

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saagarjha
A high school friend had one of these in front of his house…it was obviously
the butt of many jokes every spring. It's nice to know what kind of tree it
actually was after all these years!

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80386
I grew up in a suburb filled with Bradford pears. Every spring, the whole
neighborhood smelled.

It wasn't exactly a barren area -- there were plenty of native trees. We had
to rip out a lot of maple seedlings that were trying to grow into the
foundation of the house or the middle of the lawn. But they went and filled it
with Bradford pears anyway.

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iaw
> In addition, he said, invasive plants have been enabled in their spread by
> centuries of environmental disturbance. “If we think in our forests we are
> dealing with a pristine habitat, we are deluding ourselves,” he said. Peter
> Del Tredici, a retired senior research scientist at Harvard’s Arnold
> Arboretum, said the concept of exotic invasive species didn’t emerge until
> 30 years ago, even though European settlers recorded escaped plants as early
> as 1672.

I can't vocalize it at the moment but there's something truly terrifying about
the potential implications of this paragraph.

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tomohawk
If you have a bradford pear tree, the best thing to do is cut it down. The
weakly attached limbs will fall off of the tree with no warning or apparent
cause. I've seen large limbs fall off on calm, sunny days. They are very
dangerous.

When you cut it down, poison the trunk immediately. Otherwise, you'll have
bazillions of saplings come from the roots.

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pinewurst
[https://outline.com/ArCHfP](https://outline.com/ArCHfP)

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sp332
This is fascinating, but I missed why the trees that didn't have thorns now
have thorns?

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rini17
The rare thornless mutation got reversed when the trees cross-breeded.

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mohaine
Trees were being grafted from varieties with thorns. Once the top died the
roots would shoot up a sprout that could breed thorns.

There was also cross breeding with other thorn less varieties but I believe
this was mostly after the damage had been done.

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beamatronic
At least it is sequestering carbon

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akeck
Seems like it could be used for pellet stove fuel.

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zupzupper
When we lose limbs off ours we burn them in the stove.

