> I was really hoping for a defense of the Bradford pear. The article explains clearly the advantages: Pest resistant, spectacular bloom and fall color and sel

> I was really hoping for a defense of the Bradford pear. The article explains clearly the advantages: Pest resistant, spectacular bloom and fall color and self-sterile so fruits weren't a problem and it was not invading until many decades later. > they smell like sperm. To be fair this is a problem shared with common pears and nobody complains. The cultured Pear tree smell like fish in bloom to me. The flowers are gorgeous. Photinia Red Robin has the same problem and is widely planted also. Small inedible fruit is a feature, not a bug. If you put a common pear tree in a sidewalk and don't remove the 250g fruits, the people will start to slip in the mashed fruit and you will have a lot of broken hips. And pears attract wasps also. In any case you can obtain the same effect with crabbaples and replace it by a tree that smells good, has a wider palette of colors and is less prone to split. They will drop a thousand of small fruits still and (unlike callery pear that is very plague resistant) they are prone to several diseases but not so prone to split in two if they are pruned correctly