After 52 years, Baltimore picks a native for its official tree. It was kinda dramatic.

For over half a century, Baltimore has had as its official tree the Chanticleer pear, a fast-growing invasive whose sales in Maryland were banned earlier this year.

But the reign of this brittle and fishy-smelling intruder, better known as the callery pear, is over. Six native contestants toed the line at Cylburn Arboretum on Thursday evening to vie for the city’s title.

Like Olympic sprinters mugging for the camera, each boasted a trademark style. Call it swagger. The blackgum is a hardwood renowned for its fire engine autumn hues. American sycamores can live hundreds of years and carry a flaky, exfoliating bark that makes their mottled exterior hard to miss. The tuliptree, known to most as the tulip poplar, sprouts broad leaves, and, though a quick grower, is quite good at storing carbon.

Staged by Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, Thursday’s race was the culmination of a months-long competition to select a mascot that could supplant the old invasive’s tarnished name while bringing a bit of local flair. Six species native to the Baltimore area were nominated — also the bald cypress, the bitternut hickory and the overcup oak — and hundreds of residents cast votes for their pick this spring.

The people decided, but the winner was revealed in a footrace: Forestry staffers decked out in elaborate arbor costumes racing around a Cylburn Arboretum track. Hundreds came out to watch.

Onlookers cheered their favorites, and Mayor Brandon Scott, who introduced the contest as Baltimore’s “biggest race of the year,” called the start.

Just like that, the woods were on the move. Don’t tell Macbeth.

Baltimore baseball fans may be partial to their sprinting, condiment-covered hot dogs, but at this tree hugger gathering, fervor was reserved for the city’s homegrown deciduous denizens.

The American sycamore and bitternut hickory, dribbling a nut like a soccer ball, came out of the gates strong while the tall, girthy tulip poplar waddled near the rear.

But after a surprise contestant, the reigning callery pear, jumped out of a thicket to disrupt the field, the race was anyone’s.

The audience of arbor enthusiasts — nice, plant-respecting people to be sure — jeered the invasive and applauded when it finally tumbled to the ground.

The tulip poplar, attempting to hit the gas in the final strait, caught his own roots and collapsed. Competing trees stalled, jogging in place, and the American sycamore, forest ecologist Megan Carr, helped her felled comrade to his feet.

This might have been a heartwarming display of sportsmanship had the tulip poplar not gathered himself and quickly dusted his helper to the finish, breaking the tape some two and a half minutes after the start.

In what one observer deemed a “magnificent” (if blatantly rigged) victory, the tuliptree announced himself as Baltimore’s new official tree.

Played by assistant chief forester Brendon Brown, the victor gave a post-race interview to an urban forester painted orange like the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character who speaks for forest because “the trees have no tongues.”

“I owe it all to my midwood,” said Brown, shouting out his only recently discovered brethren, a tree classification that sits somewhere between the traditional categories of hardwood and softwood. He went on to thank the fans and Baltimore parks, which he said support countless wildlife species.

“Sorry,” he concluded. “That was a lot.”

After shedding his stifling bark costume, Brown acknowledged some disappointment at his own win. Many in the forestry department had been rooting for a different species, perhaps a more impressive hardwood.

“I voted for blackgum,” Brown confessed.

Still, the tulip poplar has a lot going for it, he said. It is among the most common and the tallest trees in most Baltimore parks.

Carr, the ecologist moonlighting as a stately sycamore (her costume was complete with a papier-mâché yellow-crowned night heron in her branches), didn’t vote for her assigned tree — or any other.

“How can you choose?” she said. “They are six wonderful trees.”

At least one disagreed.

Disguised as the callery pear, urban forester and certified nature therapy guide Teddy Martello dismissed proponents of these native plants as “fascists.” He felt unfairly maligned, he said, and nostalgic for William Donald Schaefer, the domineering Baltimore mayor who elevated the invasive pear to its perch in 1974 for its striking white blossoms and hardiness on streetscapes.

Scott, for his part, expressed little remorse at demoting Schaefer’s chosen tree.

“That’s basically what my job has been since the day I got here,” the second-term mayor said. “Undoing all the bad things that they thought were good.”

Thursday’s contest was held during the summer gathering for TreeBaltimore, a two-decade-old initiative aimed at increasing the city’s tree canopy to 40%. There’s still a long way to go: Recent estimates put canopy coverage at under 28%.

Still, a Baltimore Lorax can hope.

Urban forester Fred Chalfant, who by this point had shed his faux mustache and yellow brows, backed the overcup oak for the city’s new tree but spoke highly of the tulip poplar.

In the Seuss fable of environmentalism and industrial greed, Chalfant’s character leaves readers with a sobering challenge: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Asked how he’s feeling about the environmental state of things, the Lorax demurred, then struck a cheerier tone.

“I’m really excited about the turnout today and the enthusiasm for trees in Baltimore City,” he said.