The tree that Kentucky wants you to kill is one that a lot of people planted on purpose. It arrives in yards as a tidy ornamental with glossy leaves and a froth of white blossoms every spring, and it leaves as a thorny thicket that has swallowed fence lines, pastures, and forest edges across the state. On October 9, the Boone County Extension Office will host one stop in a statewide effort to undo that mistake: bring proof you cut down a Bradford pear, and take home a free native tree in its place.
The event runs at the Boone County Enrichment Center, 1824 Patrick Drive in Burlington. It is open to any Kentucky resident, not just Boone County homeowners, though participants should bring identification to prove residency. Registration is required so the office knows how many trees to buy, and the rules are specific: one tree per household, and the pear you remove must measure at least four inches in diameter at breast height. The replacement trees come in three-gallon pots and range from two to five feet tall. As of the program's listing, the Boone County event had reached its maximum capacity — a sign of how popular the swap has become.
The tree at the center of all this is the Bradford pear, a cultivar of the Callery pear, Pyrus calleryana. Its path to American suburbia began in the early twentieth century, when the United States Department of Agriculture went looking for a way to save the commercial pear industry from fire blight, a bacterial disease that was devastating orchards. The agency's plant explorers collected seeds in China, and the hardy Asian species was tested as rootstock — a robust base onto which growers could graft the fragile fruiting pear. The species name honors Joseph Callery, a Catholic missionary who collected plants in China and introduced the tree to Europe in the nineteenth century.
That might have been the end of it. Instead, horticulturists noticed the Callery pear had other virtues. It grew fast, tolerated cramped urban soils, resisted disease, and stayed small enough to fit under power lines without heaving up sidewalks. In the 1950s and 1960s, a particular variety was selected and named for the head of the USDA's Plant Introduction Station at Glenn Dale, Maryland, where it was first bred. The Bradford pear became a favorite street and yard tree, marketed as sterile — incapable of spreading, and therefore safe to plant anywhere.
That promise was wrong, and the reason is a small piece of botanical irony. Bradford pears cannot pollinate themselves; a lone tree really is sterile. But when a second Callery pear cultivar is planted nearby — an Aristocrat, a Cleveland Select, a Chanticleer — the two can cross-pollinate. The resulting fruit is small and brown, of no use to people, but birds eat it and carry the seeds into fencerows, roadsides, and open fields. There the offspring revert to something closer to their wild ancestors: fast-growing, thorny, and aggressive. Left unchecked, they form dense monocultures that crowd out native wildflowers and trees, reducing the diversity of the landscape and the wildlife that depends on it.
The tree has domestic problems too. Its branch structure is notoriously weak, and mature Bradford pears split apart in wind and ice storms, dropping limbs on cars, roofs, and power lines. The spring blossoms, so pretty from a distance, carry an odor that has been compared to dead fish, cat urine, and worse. And the trees are short-lived even when they stay upright.
Kentucky's bounty program grew out of an effort to address all of that at the source. The first events were held in Franklin County in March 2022, organized by the University of Kentucky's College of Agriculture, Food and Environment together with the Remove Invasives Partnership of Franklin County and other local groups. Ellen Crocker, an assistant professor of forest health extension in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, was among the organizers. At the time, she described the Bradford pear as a tree that had been "touted as this perfect tree" — small, glossy, and supposedly sterile — before its real liabilities became clear.
The idea was simple and a little bit cheeky: rather than lecture homeowners about invasive species, offer them a deal. Cut down the problem tree, photograph yourself with the stump, and walk away with a native replacement. Crocker has said the selfie requirement is part of the point. "You take a selfie of you with your cut down pear tree, and you get a free tree," she said. The photograph is proof, but it is also a small ceremony of conversion.
The model was not unique to Kentucky. North Carolina State University Extension and its partners launched a Bradford Pear Bounty in Greensboro in April 2022, and Clemson Extension runs a similar exchange in South Carolina, where property owners can trade up to five trees at a time. The concept has spread because it works on a practical level: it gives people a reason to act, and it replaces a known nuisance with something better rather than simply removing it.
In Kentucky, the program has expanded steadily. This fall, seven counties are hosting bounty events, stretching from Boone County in the north to McCracken County in the west. Warren County is trying a variation: instead of handing out trees on site, it is partnering with a local vendor and giving participants vouchers they can redeem for the tree of their choice. Fayette County's event at The Arboretum in Lexington requires no registration and distributes trees first come, first served. Estill County will hold two days of distribution in Irvine. Events in Christian and Scott counties are still being scheduled.
The program is a partnership among UK Forest Health Extension, the participating county Extension offices, and the Kentucky Division of Forestry. Crocker said she was excited to see seven counties take part this year. For her, the exchange is as much about awareness as about the trees themselves. "I feel like it's been very successful in just raising people's awareness about the problems of these invasives and how they can upgrade them and their landscape with better plants," she said.
The math behind the effort is straightforward. A Bradford pear that survives in a yard keeps producing seeds that birds scatter across the countryside, so every tree removed eliminates a potential source. "Each tree removed eliminates a potential source of seeds," Crocker said. "In its place, a native tree can become part of a healthier Kentucky landscape."
For anyone planning to take part in Boone County, the steps are the same as at every other stop. Cut down a Bradford or another Callery pear cultivar on your property, making sure the trunk is at least four inches across at chest height. Take a photo of yourself with the cut tree. Bring the photo and proof of Kentucky residency to the Enrichment Center on Patrick Drive in Burlington on October 9. Leave with a native tree in a pot, while supplies last. Questions can go to the Boone County Extension Office at 859-586-6101.
It is a modest transaction — one dead tree for one living one — but it reverses a decision made decades ago, when a tree that seemed perfect turned out to be anything but. The blossoms will still come every spring. They just won't smell like a mistake anymore.