Ahh, spring . . .  so many beautiful shrubs, trees, and flowers coming into bloom, many filling the air with such delightful aromas that it makes you want to go up and smell each and every flower. That is, until you come across one of those beautiful white flowering trees that seem to be planted everywhere – and before you can even approach the tree you are overwhelmed with a terrible, somewhat fishy smell that just turns your stomach.  

      That beautiful white tree is the ornamental pear tree, Pyrus calleryana. It is a very commom tree in the landscape, especially as a street tree, because of its medium size, attractive narrow form, and its relatively low cost.  Its biggest drawbacks are usually considered to be that many cultivars are either prone to fireblight, or tight branch angles, or both. Narrow branch angles cause weak points in the tree structure and can cause large limbs to split from the tree and ruin its form. In my opinion, this tree’s biggest offense is the horrendous smell of its flowers. They have such a strong scent that there have been times when that I identified a pear tree’s prescence before acutally seeing it. So, if you are wondering why your yard has that terrible odor every spring, look around for a tree covered in white flowers and you’ll know.

     Ornamental pears aren’t the only smelly trees. Soon after the pears flower, the hawthorns begin to flower. They have a very similar smell, but not quite as strong. Plus, they are not nearly as common. Probably the worst offender is the ginkgo tree, Ginkgo biloba. It’s not the flowers that smell in a ginkgo – in fact ginkgos are not flowering plants. It is the fruits that fall in early autumn.  The fruits contain buytric acid, a chemical also found in vomit, which is exactly what the rotting fruits smell like. Luckily, the trees are dioecious and you can plant a male tree with no fruits.  

       If you can’t stomach the smell of ornamental pear but still want a nice spring flowering display, perhaps a good alternative would be a flowering crabapple. They are also very common landscape trees, but come in such a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes that I wouldn’t call them overused. Many cultivars also have attractive colored fruits in the fall, unlike ornamental pears which only have small brown nubs of fruit that go unnoticed by most.  A second option would be serviceberry, Amelanchier sp.. These medium-sized trees have showy but short lived flowers in early spring with edible berries in early summer. For more information on serviceberries, check out one of my earlier blogs here.  

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

Lots of flowers have “lily” added to the name: lily-of-the-valley, waterlily, daylily, calla lily, to name a few. It’s understandable – the lily is an archetypal flower, equal to the rose in history and symbolism, with thousands of years of reverence attached to it. Those other “lilies” have plenty of charm, but none of them have the sheer presence of the true lily.