FORT SILL, Okla., March 24, 2016 -- Spring always has a few pioneers that brave the potential of a killing frost, but the first white blossoms that began to appear on trees a few weeks ago managed to avoid this week's doom.
The trees that looked like crab apples I had seen in Maine, strutted their stuff around these parts near the end of February. I was informed that they were Bradford pears, an ornamental whose "pears" are more like seeds and aren't really edible. From my research, it seems that some landscapers don't care for them because they are imports from overseas and can be invasive, spreading seedlings far and wide and usurping native vegetation. The blossoms supposedly smell like rotten fish.
Hmmm, I've been up close to them at the Fort Sill Commissary, and in my own neighborhood in northeast Lawton, and never caught even so much as a fishy whiff. Are these Bradford pear wannabes?
At any rate, they sure are beautiful, and a most welcome sight after a brown winter.
The redbud trees are coming on now. They are a native species, contributing their rose-pink pointillism to the sketched branches of barren trees in our woodlands. There was even one particularly luscious specimen doing a solo performance on the Fort Sill Golf Course in full bloom last week. Backdropped by golf carts, it drew attention to itself that it so richly deserved.
What other flowering trees have you noticed on Fort Sill? In your neighborhoods? Post your photos on our Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/FortSillTribune.
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