At the first hint of spring across the south there’s a wash of beautiful white blossoms on a delicate tree. The Native Americans in the Appalachians call this “What the fuck?” because there was never a tree that bloomed so early in the year before or one that was such a goddamn nuisance.
Native Americans, like the rest of us, would note, the aroma of these little white blossoms hold a subtle hint of lavender, but mostly it’s a mixture of county fair vomit and formula-fed babyshit.
This is the Bradford Pear, the Frankenstein monster of the nursery industry that some fucking idiots still put in their yards. If you see one and have a chainsaw fire the fucker up and cut the goddamn thing down. This might make your neighbors angry, but I’m sure they’ll understand when you explain:
Botanists with an eye for beauty created the Bradford Pear as an ornamental. Its blossoms were plentiful, it didn’t get too big and its limbs seemed to reach for the sky! To top it off, the trees were sterile, so only nurseries would be able to supply them. All-in-all, it seemed like the perfect little tree the burgeoning suburbia of the 1960s. It sure did. It sure did. It sure … .
Soon the goddamn things were everywhere and every chucklefuck with a hole in his or her yard or park put a fucking Bradford Pear in.
Then something started to happen. The trees weren’t what people had claimed they were. See, the Bradford Pear is like that crazy girlfriend you had that was so hot that you told yourself over and over that she wasn’t crazy. The question that no one wants to ask because no one wants the answer is: “If she’s so fucking hot and she’s not fucking crazy why is she fucking YOU?” You know there’s only one reason and it’s not because you’re so good looking. No, it's because she IS fucking crazy!
The Bradford Pear is like if that crazy girlfriend told you she couldn’t get pregnant and then got pregnant, but the kids just kept coming and they were crazier than she was. The Bradford Pear, as it turned out, cross-pollinates with any other pear, fucks up the offspring of THOSE pears, and then produces worthless little balls filled with potent little seeds that spread every-goddamn-where.
Crazy Girlfriend, can’t you keep your panties on and quit fucking my friends and neighbors? The whole countryside seems to be filled with your idiot kids.
The Bradford Pear offspring are typically callery pears, which are full of thorns and turn into thickets so dense that the only way to clear them is by bulldozers. BULLDOZERS! Like the Bradford Pear, they don’t produce edible fruit. Too boot, those original Bradford Pears are so weak that their limbs break off almost just for spite and they fall the fuck apart over anything - just like that crazy girlfriend who blamed you for it. And, suddenly, we have no native pears, because Bradford-Fucking-Frankenstein has replaced them. That doesn't even address the fact that the sons-of-bitches produce pollen that fuck up your allergies for weeks!
These trees are not natural. In fact, any goddamned fruit tree that has been denatured so that it blooms big but does not produce fruit is not normal. Anybody who plants a tree like that should starve for a goddamn week. Maybe a real peach or pear tree doesn’t bloom quite as big for your chickenshit neighbors to marvel at, but it produces fucking fruit like it’s supposed to.
If you plant a tree, plant a tree that does what nature intended for it to do or don’t plant one at all.
And if you see a Bradford Pear, cut the son-of-a-bitch down.
Yours in Christ,
Russell Upsumdinar
(Note: The Angry Gardener is meant for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not actually advocate cutting down Bradford Pear trees that are not owned by the person intending to cut said tree down. A more realistic solution would be reading the above article to the owner of a Bradford Pear and encouraging them to cut the tree down themselves. Loan them a fucking chainsaw if you have one.)