A Fluff Piece

For the last few days cottonwood fluff has been floating through the air. I think I know the source, a tree that's half a block or so away. But every year at this time when the wind is right and the air is clear, I see its progeny.

So light, so fragile, yet tenacious enough to go the distance, it lodges itself in driveway cracks, leaf piles and sometimes even on the ground. It's hard not to see it as wishes spun from the spring air, spores of hope.

I read about the tree, learn that it's a type of poplar that does well in stressed soil. It became the official state tree of Kansas in 1937, the state legislature dubbing it "the pioneer of the prairie."

Funny then to see it cast its seeds out onto the tidy, mulched lawns of suburbia. Perhaps we are the final frontier.


(Photo: Wikipedia)