The beautiful, stinky trees of Cambridge

Laura ponders Bradford pear trees, which, soothingly line the streets of Cambridge, but which also tend to die off fairly easily and stink up the joint after they flower:

.. the trees tend to self-destruct. Not as in, "KABOOM" - as in, if they are not pruned as they grow, their tightly-crowded branches push away from the too-narrow, thinly-barked trunk, opening their thumbprint shape into more of a round baby toenail stunted with fungus, leaving them susceptible to wind damage in the warmer months and ice damage in the colder months. ...