Once the darling of the New York Times as well as plant nurseries and commercial landscapers across the South (not to mention the homeowners delighted by its beautiful and uniquely fragrant flowers), it has now come to be an object of scorn among botanists and conservationists and utility companies and yes, even government officials. And let us not forget those turncoat homeowners who are unwilling to do some extra home repair now and then, a small price to pay for so much floral extravagance. What’s wrong with these people? And placing a bounty on a poor defenseless plant? Bounty hunters are the stuff of juvenile western novels and TV shows, as we all know, and have no place in modern society.
Where I am “coming from”, as the saying goes, is figuratively and even literally my own neighborhood, specifically Washington street at the base of our hill, home of resplendent Bradford pears that create a little bit of natural beauty on what is otherwise a gritty Boston thoroughfare. Of course there are so many bad smells around here already (starting with all the car exhaust) that maybe the fishy smell gets masked somehow, but frankly some of us would prefer fish smell to combusted gasoline or the unbelievable rankness of a stuck brake caliper (and why are so many people willing to drive around with one of those? oh yeah, maybe poverty).
I’ve yet to hear of a single injury or death or even any property damage in the city of Boston due to plummeting pear branches, and around here we all walk and bike along Washington street without a care in the world (actually I rarely walk and always wear a helmet when I bike which now looks like a better idea than ever). And of course, planting a tree in a hole carved out of the sidewalk in what is mostly a concrete jungle keeps the devil from spreading its influence very far (the devil here being the Callery pear, the Bradford’s evil twin and a true “bad seed” unlike the innocent beautiful Bradford). If the birds at my feeder are spreading pear seeds across the yard, “bring it on” as a famous President once said. https://epaper.bostonglobe.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=aa10da17-0f21-4f86-b685-25b9f2189c81
