Apr 21, 2023 4 min read

My neighborhood reeks.

Not from industrial pollution, which would be worse for our health, and not from unfetched trash, which would also be awful. No, my neighborhood is smelly these days because of all those pretty blossoming trees.

I’ve got a Bradford pear tree in the front yard, and so does everyone else in my community. Two weeks ago, we all woke to find the trees had erupted into fluffy white blossoms. It was as if cumulus clouds had descended and gotten stuck in the branches that had stood bare all winter.

It took only one step out the door to remember, though. Those lovely signs of spring are smelly. Besides agreement that the trees are stinky, there seems to be no consensus on what it smells like. Some say rotten fish. I say old mushrooms. Whatever, it’s unpleasant and the air is thick with it.

The trees first came here from Asia in the 1960s, and started spreading. Although the ones in our front yards were placed there on purpose (what the heck?), in many areas Bradford pears are invasive and volunteer to plant themselves all over the place. It’s so bad that some states have banned them.

The smell only lasts two weeks or so, but that’s not the end of the menace. As the smell fades, the blossoms begin to drop. The sidewalks were covered in white confetti, as if someone dropped buckets of hole-punch dots all over.

“Badford” was rolling out phase two of its assault. I looked out to find my new Subaru had been bombed with petals. Now, it’s already hard enough to keep my shiny black car clean. But in just the few hours I left the car parked in the driveway, the tree had attacked it with its sticky little dots. Tree sap has been known to scar a paint job, so I hosed the car down and pulled it into the garage, where the tree couldn’t find it.

Some of the best things have a dark side: roses have thorns, peonies bring ants, late-night snacks cause heartburn – you know, life has pointy things in it.

It makes me wonder about the evolutionary purpose of that bad tree smell. Birds and insects like the trees, so the smell is not there to repel them. And the hornets liked the tree enough to build a nest there last summer, so the smell doesn’t keep the bugs away.

Which brings me to the question about gnats. While on my late-day bike ride this week, I found myself riding through swarms of them, like I was crashing one gnat rave party after another. I got so many of them in my eyes I had to pull over to try to pick them out. Once I could see again I did some research. Gnats are food for bats and birds. Other than that, what’s the point?

There must be a point to the Bradford tree smell. Maybe the landscapers didn’t consider the odor – or the blossom litter – when they planted hundreds of them around the new neighborhood. Maybe the developers got a good deal on the trees, 500 saplings for a penny, because nobody else wanted them. Maybe for these two weeks, the trees are pretty enough that we’ll forgive the smell.

This morning, I looked out to find my tree had lost most of its petals, which were finally washed away from the sidewalks and driveways in the weekend rain. When I stepped out the door, everything smelled clean again. Like spring is supposed to smell.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.