05/17/2026
50% off all Bradford pear removals 😂😂
The tree that stinks like fish and breaks apart in storms just got banned statewide.
Pennsylvania officially outlawed the sale and cultivation of Callery pear trees.
Landscapers are now legally prohibited from installing the highly invasive Bradford pear. For decades, this tree was the default choice for suburban developments and highway medians because it grew fast, flowered white in spring, and looked tidy in nursery pots. What buyers did not know was that those pretty flowers smelled like rotting fish.
The branches were weak-wooded and split under ice loads. And worst of all, the cultivars were cross-fertile with each other, producing thorny, aggressive offspring that escaped into forests and outcompeted native understory plants.
Pennsylvania's forests are still full of wild Callery pear. The ban does not fix that overnight. But it stops the pipeline.
Nurseries can no longer legally stock or sell the trees. Landscapers cannot install them on new projects. And the native oak and hickory saplings that should have been planted all along are finally reclaiming the local market.
White oak supports over five hundred species of caterpillars. Hickory feeds everything from squirrels to moth larvae. Bradford pear feeds almost nothing and invades everywhere.
Pennsylvania chose the tree that belongs over the tree that sells. And the forests get a break from one of the worst landscaping mistakes of the last fifty years.
