CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Maple tree seeds: you may call them helicopters or pinwheels, and chances are your lawn, car, or driveway is covered with them. WBBM Newsradio’s Nancy Harty spoke with a plant expert about why we’re seeing so many this spring.
Maple trees are producing massive amounts of seeds this year, and even the experts at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle aren’t 100 percent certain why. Plant Clinic Manager Julie Janoski has a theory.
"The weather was so dry when the maples were blooming at pollination time that since there was no rain, it was a very good year for these flowers to be pollinated; and when the flowers are pollinated that's what produces those seeds, those samaras," she said.
The maple samaras are the ones that spiral when they fall, but Janoski said elm trees are also producing samaras now. Those are round and slightly smaller than a dime.
One reason they’re so obvious now, Janoski said, is because the leaves have been slow to grow; also due to the dry spring, and because the trees are focusing their energy on reproducing. She said this is the biggest crop of the falling seeds since 2012.
"The low rainfall sort of delayed leaf emergence, so people are seeing these things a lot more because the leaves aren't as big as they normally are," she said.
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