A callery pear tree on Broadway and 70th Street in April.
New York City is about as urban a place as you can find, but even here, when spring springs, it can be spectacular. The parks, of course, are bursting. The forsythia seem to lead the way, followed by the dogwoods and the daffodils, the cherries and the tulips.
But New York’s street trees contribute to the celebration as well. One of the prettiest, and most common, is the callery pear. Each year, for two to three weeks—windy days and hard rains can shorten that period significantly—the tree’s delicate white blossom clusters brighten up neighborhoods all over town.
The species started getting popular in and around New York in the 1960s, says the Central Park Conservancy. Beside their beauty, callery pears grow quickly and are tolerant of the some of the challenges trees face in the big city—polluted air, compacted soil, the salt (over)used on snowy streets—which added to their popularity.
By 2005, says the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, there were just a shade under 50,000 callery pears in Manhattan alone, making it the second-most-common street tree in the borough, after the honeylocust. (A street tree is defined as any tree growing within the public right-of-way; trees in parks aren’t counted.)
Overall, about 11 percent of the city’s nearly 600,000 street trees are callery pears, which places them third overall in the city. Here are the top five species: London planetree (15.3 percent), Norway maple (14.1 percent), callery pear (10.9 percent), honeylocust (8.9 percent), and pin oak (7.5 percent).
Think of it as nature's ticker-tape.
Spring’s floral displays seem so fleeting, and it’s always a little sad to walk down a sidewalk covered in the pear trees' tiny white flowers. It might help to think of them as nature’s confetti, a celebration of spring.