Apparently, the decorative pear is the Official Tree of the City of Aiken.
The decorative pear, in case you didn't know, is this nondescript, unobtrusive, medium sized deciduous tree 50 and a half weeks out of the year. Since they don't even bear fruit (it is, after all, "decorative"), one might wonder why anyone even bothers planting them. But for that one week and a half in early spring, right before the actual leaves emerge, something really spectacular happens: they explode into a display of white flowers so gaudy that they can be seen from the International Space Station.
Honestly, I didn't realize there were so many of them in Aiken until today. I had to go to my orthopedic surgeon's office at Aiken Regional Medical Center this morning for my fifth (and hopefully final) injection of artificial joint fluid, and...egad. Never mind that it was sunny and in the sixties...it actually looked like it had snowed all over town. (Which is REALLY a shock, seeing as winter weather is not something we're familiar with here in the Deep South.) Everywhere you looked it was pear trees. Pear trees , pear trees as far as the eye can see, all shrouded in white blooms. It was really something impressive...
...and stinky. See, that's the other drawback to the decorative pear. Let's just say no one will ever get rich selling a perfume called "eau de decorative pear." Turns out that the ubiquitious trees are as pungeant as they are showy. So maybe it's good that they only display for a week and a half a year...nobody would want to put up with them much longer than that.
The decorative pear, in case you didn't know, is this nondescript, unobtrusive, medium sized deciduous tree 50 and a half weeks out of the year. Since they don't even bear fruit (it is, after all, "decorative"), one might wonder why anyone even bothers planting them. But for that one week and a half in early spring, right before the actual leaves emerge, something really spectacular happens: they explode into a display of white flowers so gaudy that they can be seen from the International Space Station.
Honestly, I didn't realize there were so many of them in Aiken until today. I had to go to my orthopedic surgeon's office at Aiken Regional Medical Center this morning for my fifth (and hopefully final) injection of artificial joint fluid, and...egad. Never mind that it was sunny and in the sixties...it actually looked like it had snowed all over town. (Which is REALLY a shock, seeing as winter weather is not something we're familiar with here in the Deep South.) Everywhere you looked it was pear trees. Pear trees , pear trees as far as the eye can see, all shrouded in white blooms. It was really something impressive...
...and stinky. See, that's the other drawback to the decorative pear. Let's just say no one will ever get rich selling a perfume called "eau de decorative pear." Turns out that the ubiquitious trees are as pungeant as they are showy. So maybe it's good that they only display for a week and a half a year...nobody would want to put up with them much longer than that.