Cottonwood

I work by a stand of cottonwood trees. I know this only because some days my visibility is limited by all this fluff flying at my car.

I assume that's the stuff. I never see it on the ground, only in the air. It links up like dust bunnies.

(Everybody sing, to the tune of Ghost Riders, "Dust Bunnies in the skkyyyy..." )

Never on the ground, and never in a tree. Evidently cottonwoods are a form of poplar, and I've seen poplars, but I have never seen a tree with fluff on it. I'm not looking for a giant spent dandelion, either. I'd take a tree with just a few fluffpods.

Three years ago I was struck by the cottonwood storms by my new job, now I find they've followed me home. This weekend there was an fluffy F1 tornado in my yard.

Perhaps what's happening is that the fluff never degrades, it just goes up to the stratosphere and floats down again every spring.

I just did a little research so I know what to look for. Has anyone ever seen this on a tree?

That looks pretty fake to me.

Comments

[Becs]

I've never seen a cotton wood tree. I always think of Western movies and novels where someone's going on and on about the beauty of them.

[Zayrina]

You silly city person you.

[Hattie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvE9DtCGY4

[Tami]

I don't think that I've ever seen a cottonwood, but I've sung the word a gazillion times in the song "Tammy". They're whispering above, you see.

[Amy in StL]

We used to have cottonwoods by the playground at my gradeschool. I don't ever remember seeing the fuzz in the tree but on windy days when they were seeding it was sometimes like a blizzard. The coolest ones are the sycamore which have little brown balls which break into fuzzy seeds kind of like a cottonwood.

[~~Silk]

There's a huge cottonwood across from the end of my driveway at the old house. The "snow" falls into the circle at the end of the street and swirls around and around, forming knee-high drifts.

And then it disappears. I don't know where it goes. Maybe birds and small rodents eat the seeds, and collect the fluff for nests.

[TheQueen]

Becs - Nope. They are the ugliest trees ever, now that I have my eyes on them. I'm now trined to spot them, and they do have brown and white clots of bio=trash on them.
Zayrina - Nu uh! We have horses down the street!
Hattie - Now I've been singing that all day!
Tami - Ah. Cotton, whispering, and in son't fence me In it murmurs. Never heard it, they just silently poot out those puff balls.
Amy inStL - I know I never had those in Florissant. Just the whirly-gig seed pods and the green sword seed pods.
~~Silk - Good lord! I haven't seen drifts, ours is all airborne.

[Caroline]

I wonder if that's what the puffy balls on the 4th floor of the parking garage are. They've been there a couple of weeks.

[TheQueen]

Caroline - I've never seen them stick around so long, though.