Not Actually Snow – Pussy Willows
Every year around mid-June, we get periods where it appears to be snowing again, even though the temperature is around 70 F or so. Like this, on June 28, 2019[1]:
It even blows and drifts kind of like snow.
Looking closer, though, we can see that they are little cottony parachutes, with tiny seeds.
Everyone says it is cottonwood (Populus deltoides), which definitely does have seeds like this. But, in this case, I think we have something else. Cottonwoods are a type of poplar, and are quite big trees. They also have the distinctive spade-shaped leaves that are characteristic of poplars, which should make them easy to spot. But, in the places where I see the fluff, the associated plants appear to be these bushes, which are most certainly not cottonwoods:
Their seed pods are like this:
These appear to be some kind of small, shrubby willows, possibly American Pussy Willow, Salix discolor. The thing is, these seeds are not the part of the pussy willow plant that are most familiar[2]. It seems that willows are dioecious plants, which means that there are male plants and female plants. The male plants have the fluffy “catkins”, which in the pussy willows are silvery, furry things that have kind of a resemblance to cat fur, at least until they start producing pollen.
Those are not the flowers we are looking at, here.
Instead, we are looking at the mature female flowers. Willows are insect-pollinated, with nectaries to attract bees and flies, but they must draw pollinators by scent because the flowers are not very showy. The female flowers are very different from the male flowers. They start off looking like a spiky stalk, but when they mature they burst open to release the parachute seeds.
Anyway, looking at what willows are related to, I see that the aspens and cottonwoods are in the same order as the willows, so it is no surprise that they would all tend to have similar types of parachute seeds.
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[1] Yeah, the bottom of our road is still closed after the flood last spring. The road commission didn’t do anything with it this year because there were other, more urgent pieces of flood damage to repair. As of now, our road repair season is over, so nothing is going to be done until at least next spring. It is possible they might just give it up as a bad job and never repair it at all.
[2] The male flowers are popular in springtime cut flower arrangements. Children like to pet them.
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Looks like cottonwood season. Alamo. Poplar. Mid may to mid june. It does look like snow. Pogonomyrmex ants harvest the seeds. Algodon.
Pussy Willows are imperialists, seeking to spread their kind throughout the world. Just look at all of those crack airborne seed troopers, doing their best to fall from the sky on unsuspecting neighboring plants!