Here’s to the Blooms of the Ornamental Pear Tree

Spring is just around the corner, this Sunday officially. The crocuses and the daffodils are already blooming in our garden. But the trees are still bare, for now.

The first trees to bloom in our neck of the world, Brooklyn, are the ornamental pear trees. We have many of those aligning the streets and avenues of Park Slope, Brooklyn. They bloom in a splendid riot of white buds that celebrate the arrival of spring like a freeze frame of white fireworks. These blossoms burst before these any other trees show any sign of awakening from their winter sleep. Then when a week or so later the small, light green leaves of the ornamental pear start to appear alongside the white blossoms, the trees look like the most delicious risotto.

Then the blooms fall, covering the neighborhood in tiny white down, and the ornamental pear trees look rather plain, like any old street tree, for 7 or 8 months. Then in autumn their leaves turn a deep crimson red that depending on the year can be just as spectacular in their dark colorfulness as the blinding white of their spring.

This year’s white ornamental pear blossoms are still in waiting. I took these pictures last year. I post them now in anticipation of another riot of cotton candy blossoming.