Through The 'Tombstones' Of Burned-Out Trees On AMount Lemmon Hike. A grove of ferns atop the Catalina Mountains appears to be buried in two inches of snow in June. In fact, they're dusted with tens of thousands of cottony aspen tree seeds. Vaguely similar to dandelion spores, the aspen progeny launch themselves from hundreds of catkins 30 feet up in the air.
Catkins look like cocoons, but are really the flowers of the aspen tree.
After pollination, the seeds and their puffy parachutes grow on the catkin. With the slightest breeze they drift to the forest floor like a mid-summer snowstorm. It's a comforting mirage. Though we're at 9,200 feet and 30 degrees cooler than Tucson, visible in the valley below, it's still sweating hot. We've already hiked the Lemmon Park Trail to the Mount Lemmon Trail, where we passed the aspens.