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Home::Environment
Cottonwood "cotton" is flying/ Bad Company
Author : Thomas Ogren
Cottonwood “cotton” is flying/ Bad Company
Ó Thomas Leo Ogren
I originally saw the question below posted in an Internet
gardening forum and decided to answer it. It was a question I’d
been asked many times before and I knew my answer would be
useful in an article on springtime allergies caused by city
trees. So I saved it to share with you here.
“Does anyone else here really suffer from allergies when the
seeds of Cottonwood are flying? I KNOW it is not the cottonwood
but I am really curious as to what is pollinating at the same
time.” Diana Pederson, Ingham County, Michigan, Zone 5, United
States, author of Landscaping With Bible Plants:
That’s a very good question. Around here, as the “cotton” (the
seeds) of the female poplars (cottonwoods and aspens) and the
willows is flying about, so is a good deal of pollen from
different, unrelated species of trees. It is very common at this
precise time that many people are suffering from extreme bouts
of hay fever and often it is this “cotton” that gets the blame.
Some city arborists refuse to plant female willows or poplars
because of their firm (if mistaken) belief that this “cotton” is
really some kind of pollen. But it isn’t pollen; it is seed. It
is NOT what is causing the allergies at that time. By the time
the seeds of the female willow and cottonwoods are flying,
pollen from the males of these two species is already spent.
However this flying of seed coincides with pollen release of
many allergenic plants. Out West this is the same time that the
millions of urban “fruitless” male mulberry trees are shedding
their highly allergenic pollen. It is also the time that the
olive trees are starting to release pollen. The cypress trees
and shrubs are releasing very large amounts of pollen at this
time too, as are the many male Ailanthus trees. At or about the
same time the walnut trees are releasing a large amount of
pollen, as are many species of hickory, butternut, and pecan.
Perhaps the most pervasive at this point are the oaks, many
species of which are still at this time covered with staminate
flowers and just loaded with pollen. At the same time that the
female willows and cottonwoods are releasing all that harmless
fluff into the air, the birch trees have just finished shedding
large amounts of pollen, much of which is still lying around on
the ground. In southern areas the alders often bloom twice (as
will many birch and junipers) and the second bloom of the alders
sometimes will coincide precisely with the flying of the
“cotton.” Also to take into consideration is that by the point
in the year when the cottony seeds of the willows and poplars
starts to float about, most of the male maples and male ash, and
a large number of other trees and shrubs have already released
their own pollen. Unless this pollen was washed away by strong
downpours of rain, much of it is still lying about, and is still
causing problems, weeks or sometimes even months after it was
released. To add to all of the above, at precisely this same
time, the grasses start to release pollen. The ornamental
landscape clump grasses all produce huge amounts of pollen at
this time, as do most bluegrass species, bentgrasses, Bahia
grasses, and especially Bermuda lawns that have not been kept
closely mowed. By the way, the newer hybrid Bermuda grasses are
sterile and pollen-free, but not the old common Bermuda lawns by
any means. By the time this poplar and willow “cotton” is in the
air, many people with allergies are already starting to suffer
from “systems overload.” There is so much pollen being released
and so much just previously released, that it overwhelms the
immune systems of many individuals. The result of course is
allergy. The sad thing about this whole affair is that all too
often these female willows or female poplars, female
cottonwoods, female aspens, they get blamed for the pollen from
the male trees and then people cut them down! Since female trees
have flowers that are electrically charged negative - (their
roots are grounded) and since pollen from male trees picks up a
positive + charge as they tumble about in the air, the two are
mutually attractive. Female trees are powerful air cleaners, air
scrubbers. Every female tree that is chopped down makes the air
in that neighborhood that much more allergenic. We need to
protect our females!
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