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niemandhiertoday at 10:48 AM2 repliesview on HN

“Arboreal sexism” is a similar phenomenon:

We prefer male trees in cities since they do not produce fruit that drop on the streets. The result is a much higher pollen load.


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vikramkrtoday at 10:53 AM

That's not actually a thing. Very few trees we plant have specific male vs female plants. One of the few that does that gets brought up in this context, ginko, tends to have male trees preferred because the fruit kind of reeks. Ginkgo fruit is also toxic so you really don't want masses of it getting washed into local waterways in ecosystems the tree isn't native to - not a great time for the local wildlife. A significant supermajority of all the rest of the trees that you plant in cities are gonna have male and female flowers on the same plant or male and female structures within the same flower.

MyHonestOpinontoday at 3:22 PM

TIL. Trees have (biological) sex. This just blew my head. I must have been too sleepy when we saw that in high school.

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