Sturdier Options for Replacing a Very Popular Tree

MENTION THE WORD nor’easter or hurricane in southeastern Virginia or northeastern North Carolina and there’s a tree that almost seems obliged to fall apart – the Bradford pear. Granted, Bradford pears have wonderful white spring flowers and good red fall color, but they also have a branch structure that is so poorly attached that winds pull these trees apart more readily than any other tree in our landscapes.

It’s time our nurseries stop producing and offering this tree and offer other cultivars of callery pear – such as Aristocrat (broader) or Whitehouse (narrower) or Redspire (columnar with more dependable fall color) – or suggest some of the other wonderful trees that can serve as substitutes.

If you want to stick with white flowers, you can try either our native serviceberries (Amelanchier sp.), our native fringetree (Chioanthus virginicus) or the Chinese fringetree (Chioanthus retusus). There are also white-flowered crabapples such as Snowdrift (Malus), the very floriferous snowbells (Styrax obassia and S. japonicus) and one of my real favorites, the tree lilac (Syringa reticulata) that has several different cultivars ( such as Ivory Silk).

If you don’t mind a flower color change to pink, there are several good choices, including many magnolias like Wada’s Memory, Merrill and Galaxy. There are also now numerous magnolias with yellow flowers and almost purples, so give this genus a closer look when selecting flowering trees in the future.

Within the rose family you can get pink on the very early blooming flowering apricots (Prunus mume) and cherries (Prunus), including Okame and First Lady.

And without a doubt one of the showiest of all spring flowering trees, with fragrance as a bonus, is my favorite tree of all – the Pink Chimes cultivar of Japanese snowbell (Styrax japonicus).

While our native and oriental flowering dogwoods can be considered, they are very common in our area. Far less common, but very showy, is the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas). A lthough it lacks the white bracts of its relatives, it puts on a very nice display of the true dogwood flower, which is yellow. It also has a showy red fruit, as do the other two dogwoods mentioned.

If we consider trees that bloom in summer, two good substitutes for Bradford pear are the golden raintree (Koelreuteria paniculata) or its less cold-tolerant southern relative with a showy pink fruit pod, the southern raintree (K. bipinnata). Both have yellow flowers. The pagoda or scholar tree (Sophora japonica) has chains of white pea flowers.

If you’re not after flowers but want a nice shade tree with a deep reddish orange fall color , consider the Chinese pistache. This is a truly rugged city tree that needs to be used more where conditions are very challenging.

If you don’t necessarily want to replace a Bradford pear with another flowering tree, there are several small maples you might want to consider. The trident maple (Acer buergerianum) has wonderful deep brown and orange shiny peeling bark that makes for a very showy winter specimen. The Amur maple (A. ginnala) has very colorful and showy fruit (samaras) in the fall.

If you have a Bradford pear that has yet to fall apart and you’re wondering what you can do to preserve it, the best recommendation is to have a certified arborist prune it to open up some of the narrow crotch angles. Otherwise, there’s nothing you can do except enjoy it while you have it.

A few other trees in our area that fall into the storm- susceptible category are silver maple, hackberry, American elm, black cherry, honeylocust, river birch, willow, pecan, Leyland cypress and tulip tree.

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