(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The amount of white fluff in the air around Chicagoland these days can make a trip around town look like the “Upside Down” from Stranger Things, but fear not: It’s cottonwood, not anything sinister.
“You look out your window, and it looks like a snowstorm out there,” said Spencer Campbell, the Morton Arboretum’s plant clinic manager.
Campbell said he’s been seeing plenty of the cottony fibers floating off cottonwood trees since May 26.
“The wind carries that seed over those great distances to land in a suitable area to grow and become a new tree,” he said. “It’s very similar to what you’d see on a common dandelion.”
Like that pesky weed, it’s all about growing a new crop of cottonwood trees.
“Never underestimate a plant’s willingness to survive,” he said. “That’s all it’s doing, is trying to create the next generation of trees.”
Campbell said the abundance of seeds now could be due to the warm weather during seed production time, as well as the general lack of rain to knock them off the trees.
Some experts have suggested that Chicagoland is in the midst of a “mast seeding” phenomenon, which happens every few years when an unusually high amount of seeds are released from trees like cottonwoods, maples, oaks and sycamores.
One cottonwood tree can release tens of millions of seeds.
The good news: Campbell the seeds aren’t pollen — so there shouldn’t be any worries about allergies. Other than clogging gutters and littering yards, the seeds shouldn’t cause a problem before they leave in a couple of weeks.
Related
Related
Listen to our new podcast Courier Pigeon
Listen to WBBM Newsradio now on Audacy!