Chinese Pistache is a tough, adaptable shade tree grown almost entirely for its fall color — bright orange-to-scarlet foliage that rivals maple in regions too hot and dry for maples to color well. It's a relative of the true pistachio (Pistacia vera), sharing the same glossy, pinnately compound leaves, but it's grown as an ornamental rather than a nut crop. Mature trees form a broad, rounded, 25-to-35-foot canopy and tolerate heat, drought, poor soil, and urban conditions about as well as any shade tree available, which is exactly why it became a staple street and parking-lot tree across Texas, California, and much of the Southeast.
That same toughness is why it's now spreading on its own. Trees are dioecious — male and female flowers form on separate trees — and a pollinated female produces small, hard fruits that ripen red to blue-black in fall and are readily eaten and spread by birds. Seedlings turn up in ranchland, riparian corridors, and oak savanna well beyond where anyone planted them, especially in central Texas, where it's now recognized as an invasive species crowding out native vegetation. Many newer street-tree cultivars are grafted, seedless males bred specifically to avoid this; if you already have a fruiting female, pull volunteer seedlings while they're young and shallow-rooted, since larger trees can resprout from a cut stump and need a herbicide stump treatment to fully remove.
Beyond the seeding habit, it's a remarkably low-maintenance tree — largely free of the pests and diseases that plague other shade trees, and it needs little pruning beyond removing crossing branches while young to establish a strong scaffold.