A high school friend had one of these in front of his house…it was obviously the butt of many jokes every spring. It's nice to know what kind of tree it actually was after all these years!

I grew up in a suburb filled with Bradford pears. Every spring, the whole neighborhood smelled.

It wasn't exactly a barren area -- there were plenty of native trees. We had to rip out a lot of maple seedlings that were trying to grow into the foundation of the house or the middle of the lawn. But they went and filled it with Bradford pears anyway.

Oh, no. I read the whole article not realizing I know exactly what these trees are. There's quite a few around the bay. Apparently they don't smell that bad to some people but for me getting a whiff is like a slap in the face.

Wow, that businessinsider site is the worst I've seen in a while, and that's something considering TechCrunch (Oath family) is pestering Europeans with disgustingly non compliant GDPR popups.