China’s Poplar Trees: A Spring Nuisance That Snows White Fluff

From the New York Times:  Here’s the trouble: Every spring, the female poplar trees and their willow tree cousins blanket the streets of Chinese cities with cottonlike balls of fluff known as catkins. They get into everything, clogging car radiators and irritating people’s eyes. In some places they come down so thickly that they can disrupt traffic and even cause fires.

There was a young man from Beijing

whose thoughts, when it came to the Spring,

did not turn to girls

but rather great whirls

of catkins that made his eyes sting.