EDITORIAL: Remove foul scourge

April 10-- Apr. 10--It is time for our community to act to defeat a self-inflicted environmental disaster.

The callery pear cultivar, Pyrus calleryana "Bradford" -- the Bradford pear -- had been marketed to communities, landscapers and homeowners as the perfect ornamental tree. Instead, those who planted it unleashed an invasive exotic pest that forms thorny thickets conquering forests, pastures and orchards across the Ozarks.

This cultivar was even promoted in 1964 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an ornamental desirable for white flowers; shiny, attractively shaped leaves; nice fall color; compact size paired with rapid growth; and as a sterile tree that would not spread.

People soon began to object to the noisome musk of the blooms. Southern Living Grumpy Gardener Steve Bender called them "tuna on a trunk." Others have compared the smell to dead fish, rotting seaweed and worse. The tree produces clouds of fetid pollen that allergy sufferers find harmful. But the tree was wildly popular. The city of Joplin has planted the tree in sidewalk cutouts, particularly downtown.

The USDA was wrong about the compact size -- some Bradford pears are 50 feet tall -- and the claim that the trees wouldn't spread. The trees are not fertile within the Bradford cultivar, but can breed with almost everything else, even suckers that its root stock -- the trees are grafted -- throw up regularly. They produce small, hard fruit that birds flock to despite the fruits' poor nutritional value. The seeds zip through the avian digestive tract and drop everywhere the birds perch. The progeny revert to type to produce dense thorny bushes that shade out competitors and spread rapidly. For decades, nurseries have sold and we have planted what amount to tree-sized noxious weeds.

Southern Living calls them the worst tree ever. The Missouri Botanical Garden classifies the tree an invasive species. The Missouri Department of Conservation considers them invasive and has encouraged homeowners and landscapers to stop planting the trees, suggesting that they plant serviceberry, dogwood or redbud instead. Communities across the nation, including Fayetteville, Arkansas, offer a bounty to remove them.

It is time to stop this promiscuous plant filling the Ozarks with thorn thickets fit to guard Sleeping Beauty's castle.

As the Missouri Invasive Plant Task Force urges, the city of Joplin should adopt a program to remove and replace the callery pears it has planted. Homeowners are urged to do the same, and the city also should consider a sapling-swap bounty on their removal. State lawmakers should pass a measure to ban additional planting of callery pear cultivars and to bar the reproduction and sale by nurseries, garden centers and retailers. Further, the state should consider an eradication program to halt the spread of this Chinese invader that is strangling our landscape.

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