Its spring time…The flowers are blossoming, the birds are singing–sniff sniff–but what that’s smell? I asked some students on campus in front of a crowd of trees in front of the village.
KATE MCCAULEY: The cum trees?
ZACKIE MCCREE: I actually recently found out about it through reddit and I was like wait what is these cum trees, I’m like okay…
CJ: I cannot stand these trees. I want them to all be, like, chopped down so bad. That’s basically bottom line. I hold my breath as I walk under them before I go to class.
ZACKIE MCCREE: Oh, cum tree season is back!
These white flowering trees dot many areas on USC’s campus, leaving a light snow of petals on the ground. While they’re really pretty–they can be quite smelly. In fact, If you look around the web, there are tweets and posts from annoyed Angelenos who call them “cum trees.” They say the trees have a fishy or bleach-like smell. But of course, they have a more…scientific name.
MIKE WALLICH: Yeah, those are fruitless pear trees or botanically, they’re called pyrus kawakami. They’re actually from Asia.
This is Mike, USC’s campus arborist. He was responsible for bringing the trees to USC’s campus.
WALLICH: I’m kind of surprised that people think that they they smell odd. I think they smelled just like pear trees.
But, most people don’t agree with him. In fact there’s a reason why so many Angelenos are tortured by the smell every spring. The flowers of the evergreen pear emits two chemical compounds: trimethylamine and dimethylamine. These compounds are a derivative of ammonia. And what also is coincidentally in semen? Ammonia! As a result, Angeles smell that stinky bleachy smell. But these trees are everywhere, not just on USC’s campus. But why are they so popular?
Nick Arraya is a master board certified arborist from Tree Care LA, a tree maintenance company.
ARRAYA: A landscaper will recommend them. Then the property owner, whether that’s a university or a homeowner, falls in love with the idea of those white flowers in the winter time.
Landscapers will choose the trees for aesthetics, regardless of the smell. Nick takes me to a huddle of trees on USC’s campus in front of the Caruso Catholic Center. As cars speed past, we walk up to the snowy branches. Nick plucks a pear off…and then something surprising happens…
ARRAYA: I’ll reach up right here. And this is a pear that I just pulled off of it. And you can see that little bit of a speckle pattern that we are all used to. Here, I’ll hand it to you. You can smell it. It has like a sweet… (Woah Yeah.) It smells like a pear. Does not taste like a pear. Do not eat it. But it is. It’s an actual pear.
But don’t worry Trojans. You won’t have to put up with the smell for much longer.
ARRAYA: Oooh, I’m going to say usually about a month of flowering. So you guys here on campus, I’m guessing you’ve probably got another three weeks.
In the meantime, you might just have to hold your nose, and enjoy the other pleasures of springtime. For Annenberg Media, I’m Arantza Pena Popo.