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by EnderViaAnsible
2601 days ago
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As the article notes, planting both actually reduces one of the problems: pollen. Female plants attract and capture pollen. So you will slightly increase litter while moderately reducing pollen. Additionally, as the article also notes, all allergens are not created equal. Pollen is mostly notable insofar as it is allergenic; planting trees with low or nor allergenic pollen uncouples "pollen" and "pollen that causes allergies" levels. |
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I don't see any indication that the increase in litter would at all be of greater proportion than the decrease in pollen. Only that bit of pollen that gets blown to a neighboring female tree would get absorbed. Not even all of that, since presumably the majority would get blown off the tree. I can't see how any more than a single digit percent of the pollen would be captured, so people with allergies would still be affected.
The increase in litter would be significant if half the trees were female. On my college campus there were parts of the year where certain types of trees would drop seed pods and it littered the streets for the better part of a week. It'd take a significant amount of manpower to clean it up - probably a garbage-bag per tree - so we just left it outside and dealt with vegetation litter for a couple weeks.
Unless the article backs up the claim that the pollen reduction would be substantial and the increase in litter trivial it could still very well be that a mix of female and male plants does not prevent allergic reactions to such a degree that it's worth using a mix of plants.