New Jersey's beautiful but infamously smelly Bradford pear trees are one of several plant species that have officially been designated as prohibited invasive species in the Garden State, banning their propagation, sale and distribution.
If you've taken a stroll around your neighborhood recently, you may have noticed the Bradford pear, a large, white-flowered tree with an unpleasant smell.
Native to Asia, Bradford pear trees are a cultivated variety of the callery pear, which was first brought to the U.S. in the early 1900s as a way to breed resistance to a disease called fire blight into our native pears, according to Jason Grabosky, a professor of urban forestry at Rutgers University. Today, these trees can be found all over New Jersey and throughout the country.
"We had a few for this breeding program and people quickly realized it's a beautiful looking plant if you like spring white flowers and a really dense canopy ... so it quickly became a preferred plant for ornamental plantings," Grabosky previously told NorthJersey.com. "We planted it everywhere and now we have this invasive problem everywhere where we were planting these trees."
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