Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Paris Hilton Of Trees

The Dry Spot blog has the most excellent poem about the invasive Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana, also known as Callery pear), ending with:

"Apparently for some unknown reason everyone wants you around.

You are the Paris Hilton of trees."

That's just a teaser, now go read the whole thing. Being the "Paris Hilton" of something just seems so much cooler for an invasive species than being the "kudzu" of something, doesn't it?

Tip of the virtual hat goes to Les Jones for this one.

6 comments:

Kirsten said...

I found your blog through a search for Japanese knotwood.
I do enjoy the euphemism about the Paris Hilton of trees. I just saw Bradford Pear mentioned in another blog and didn't know it was an invasive.

I wish you had an rss feed enabled.

Jennifer Forman Orth said...

Oh, but I do!

Links are above my tag cloud in the left column, but I'll put them here too:

RSS Feed (via FeedBurner)
ATOM feed

The Apostrophe Cop said...

I don't understand why more people don't plant native ornamentals.

The nearby town is still planting flowering pears in its street landscaping. I'm so tired of seeing them.

BerryBird said...

I am really glad you wrote about this, because while I knew that Pyrus calleryana was non-native, I had no idea it was invasive. When I took dendro in college, we learned the species from plantings on campus as Pyrus x calleryana and I had mistakenly thought it was a sterile hybrid. It is common as a street tree here. The USDA Plants database does not show my state in the range, perhaps it is not agressive here. Of course, their site also lists the plant as suitable for nursery stock product. Sigh. The bottom picture in that link you provided is pretty damn compelling.

Anonymous said...

Are they, at least, pollinators for real pears?
As if we had any bees left...

Kirsten said...

Thanks. I figured out how to add the feed to my Google Reader after seeing your reply comment.