What is the white fluff floating around in Northern Italy (Lombardy) in Spring?

What is the white fluff floating around in Northern Italy (Lombardy) in Spring?

5/31/2017 1:22:51 AM

Strictly speaking, they are the seeds and not the pollen šŸ™‚

Milano and surroundings are really green and full of mountains and trees and parks, poplars especially are quite popular (pun intended), and what you see is what itā€™s mainly called ā€œlanugine di pioppoā€/ā€poplar fuzzā€.

Itā€™s quite complicate and Iā€™m not a botanic myself, so Iā€™ll go for a simple explanation. Actually itā€™s not strictly pollen, even if as you noticed everybody call it ā€œpollineā€: what you saw was the seeds of the trees moving around inside their mean of transport, that is the white ā€œfluffā€.

What happens in reality, is that in spring few kinds of trees release their already pollinated seeds using the white fluff at the same time, that many other trees and flowers release their much much less visible pollens. Lots of people start having allergic reactions, and as the white fluff is so much noticeable and perfectly on time, itā€™s mistaken for pollens itself.

Finally, you can find poplar and other fluff producing trees almost everywhere. If you are in the area again, I can only suggest you a visit to Monzaā€™s Park šŸ˜‰

5/30/2017 8:11:19 AM

Itā€™s the seed tufts of a poplar species, specifically Populus nigra:

enter image description here

As this article says:

The tree loves a wet, marshy soil. Which explains why there are so many poplars around Milan and in the Po River plain generally, which is a pretty soggy place. And in Milan, the problem of flying white fluff was truly awful. These pictures are not from Milan but are from that part of the country and give a good sense of the horror of it.

Same article has a photo of how the street looks:enter image description here

Credit:stackoverflow.comā€˜

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,Iā€™m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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