Discussion: Cottonwood fluff

It gets me, too. It may also be pine pollen. As the pine trees in our neighborhood have matured, the produce clouds of pollen--it coats everything in yellow dust for weeks--and it induces the full array of allergy symptoms in me. It's especially bad this year.

Yeah, probably pine pollen. Cottonwood fluff wouldn't do it itself.

There's an analogy to ragweed and goldenrod in the fall...ragweed pollen is carried in the air, while the more visible goldenrod moves pollen via insects, and gets blamed for the almost-unnoticeable ragweed's effects.

While we were visiting our son two weeks ago in SLC, the cottonwoods were in fine form. Looked like snow flurries. He has several big trees around that were very productive whenever the wind blew at all. Then again he does live at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon so no complaints.

We've had cottonwood snow flurries here this year, too. I've seen white shadows under some of the trees. I want to go and grab one of the tufts and look at it up close. One of these days I will. I'll let you know if it causes a sneezing fit! I finally resorted to a Coricidin today while out on a garden tour. Enough already.

I think the fluff is the seed stuff, not pollen. It looks like tufts of cotton almost an inch across with a central seed pod. We were wondering if it could be ginned and spun into thread.