Wack Things in Taiwan 2022

[lostinasia]

@tempogain

I once read an article that back home city trees are almost exclusively male (or is it female?) for this reason and to avoid mast dropping. If I remember right there were some unwanted knock-on effects though.

That one seems complicated - I remember reading up on it a while ago, and sort of giving up because it’s one of those cases where it’s hard to tell which expert (?) to believe.

Here’s one of your posts about it:

America's Love of Male Trees Could Be Why You're Sneezing Right Now

Pretty interesting, I didn’t know a lot of this. I thought about posting it in the slippery slope thread Is it just me, or is this less of an issue here? There doesn’t seem to be too much concern about trees dropping stuff.

Here’s a post I made linking a twitter thread rebutting it (following a @slawa post with another link on the theory).

Allergies in Taiwan

I have nowhere near enough knowledge to judge here, but this morning I read a lengthy twitter thread on how this “preference for male trees” idea is basically nonsense. A lot of it comes down to how almost all trees are both male and female:

Here’s a Slate article that tries to split the difference:

Have Cities Really Made Allergies Worse by Planting Mostly Male Trees?