Sssssh. No one ID it. Quiet now. It remains a mystery.

ttonk,

"everywhere in the wild" is all you need to know. Highly invasive and becoming a huge scourge.

Arktrees

In other words Callery pear. As with orchard pear the flowers are quite odoriferous. I would never plant one just for that reason alone.

"everywhere in the wild"...too bad it's not supposed to be there.

Oh I see. this is one of the pear trees. I'm aware of the reputation but it is a pretty tree. I thought it would be some kind of dogwoods or oaks (I somehow thought most of the trees in the wild must be either maples or oaks.) By the wild I mean little creek areas within the residential area, natural parks, freeway sides, etc. :-)

Now that I've looked up pictures, the trees I see around here seem to be Cleveland pears.

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Further research (or more of a struggle to find out what is the difference between Callery & Cleveland) reveals that Cleveland pear is a cultivar of Callery pear. :-)

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Oh last week, I was driving by a park/wilderness/abandoned farm/house lot whatever and saw a spot like a quarter-acre where these trees were planted (I thought planted, but now that I have studies what pears do they might have been just invaded that spot) so densely in rows. I thought..humm...that tree I see everywhere must be really popular. Someone seems to be operating a little nursery here. I should find out what that tree is.

This post was edited by ttonk on Thu, Apr 18, 13 at 18:11

bboy alluded to the fact that the flowers are fairly reminiscent of year old sweaty gym socks.. left in a wet closed bag for the year...

ken

But I do wonder as WHY any flower would smell like that (and how a flower that stinks can survive.) All the images from a "stinky flowers" google search look nothing like the pear blossoms.
Anyhow, any kinds of pear trees and Norway maples have been on my little note of "trees no-no" for a while, so the search goes on...

Many rose family plants that attract bumblebees have this same type of smell.

noone said plant pheromones HAVE to smell nice to the human nose.. to be effective ..

when you think of it .. flies are not attracted to roses .. if you get my drift .... they are attracted to death .. and post-digestive food by-product ....

ken

If you do want a white flowering native tree for full sun then consider Serviceberry (Amelanchier) and Hawthorn (Crataegus).