【文稿已更新】杨絮柳絮满天飞，该给树木绝育么？

XH: When it’s the annual catkins season, the flying fluffy white stuff can be beautiful to some and irritating to others. A scheme in Shanghai’s Putuo District to stop poplar, phoenix and willow trees from producing catkins that can cause allergic reactions in people has met with a mixed response. So why is that somebody find it annoying while other people find it’s ok? HY: Well I think that for people who are allergic to these things, it can be, you know, very troublesome and you get really bad reactions from it and also for those who are not allergic to catkin, it just could be very annoying, and even you know for me, someone who wears glasses, I find it difficult to open my eyes half of the time, eh, when there’s a lot of this fluff floating in the air. John: Yeah, I don’t really care. I have to be honest. I think the most interesting take-away for me is that I thought these things were called dander. I had no idea what else to call. Someone ask me the other day: “what do you call that stuff?” “I don’t know. dander.” Turns out there actually is a real name for it, catkin. But I mean I understand that for some people you know it does cause allergic reactions. That’s true of any plants that releases pollen or dander or what have you into the air, there are going to be people who have mild to in some cases severe allergic reactions, which is of course a big problem. For me, personally, I don’t know, it’s just a kind of, it’s just a way that I know spring is finally here in Beijing. XH: Okay. HY: And actually there’s a real reason to be worried about catkin, because they can be a fire hazard too. Last year, during a single week in May, 105 fires involving catkins were reported in Beijing alone. And there was even more unfortunate incident in Runan, Henan province. Last May, a couple were burned to death after their catkin-covered, thatched-roof house caught fire, and then it was the catkin that was regarded being aggravating the fire. XH: So let’s look at this whole catkin-control programme in Shanghai, basically it’s injecting a liquid into the trees to neuter the trees. And some people are saying it’s a good idea, but some people are not. Let’s first listen to our listener Ting who has an opinion to share here. Ting: 给树木绝育，这是涉及整个生态系统的事情。然后历史上很多时候就是因为急功近利，看到眼前的利益，然后轻易改变一个生态系统，往往会造成很意想不到的……而且我觉得还有其他的方法啊，比如说，慢慢地，然后在城市里面少种一些柳树，用其他一些树木代替之类的。 XH: Yeah, basically Ting is saying that might be a short-sighted approach to solving problem, because you don’t know what kind long-term like biological consequence you will have on trees environment. HY: Yes, I think what we have now you can say, you know, it’s a sort of disturbing the eco-system. But it was because that it was the so-called female trees that were planted obsessively. So 70 percent of these trees are so-called female trees. And that’s why you have the catkins. John: Yeah. I mean look. I would say that I am pretty ambivalent about this, almost to the point of indifference. But I think it’s important to point out that anyone who argues about the… like you know “it’s not natural”; you know, “it hurts the eco-system”. Well, I mean the poplar and willow population in Beijing at least is not natural. It’s not part of the local occurring eco-system. They were all planted here by people who wanted to make Beijing greener. You know, good for them, Beijing does need to be greener. So the problem is that, this problem that we see now was created when people were just not paying attention to what type of trees they were planting. So everyone that argues, oh, it’s not nature. Well, you know, these trees are not here for natural reasons to begin with. If they were, you know, naturally occurring, if they were local, okay, fine, you might have an argument there. But I think you just can’t say that as, we see that they were all artificial. XH: Yeah. I agree with that.