So around here we have these horrible, horrible trees growing everywhere. They drop tons of pollen that's horrible for hayfever and even if you are blisfully free of such allergies there's so much of it in the air at times that you need to wear eyewear if you don't want it in your eyes. And their seeds are found in these little ball things that we called itchy bombs at school because if you picked a good one it would explode into a cloud of fuzz when thrown at something. But it wasn't the fuzz, oh no, the fuzz was covered in some kind of chemical that made hatever bare skin it touched horribly itchy. And when you scratched it it just got worse because it just spread the chemical all over your skin! Many a schoolyard war was waged with these itchy bombs. To top it off they're not even native, some European 200 years ago decided these were the trees he wanted to remind him of home.
Their one plus is that they look kinda nice.
Anyway, they're called plane trees, which makes no sense whatsoever. The other day I was chatting with soe friends about them so I decided to google up some pictures and a Wikipedia link. While reading through said Wikipedia page, I noticed something.
"They are often known in English as planes or plane trees. Some North American species are called sycamores..."
I'm not sure I trust Professor Sycamore any more. Nothing named after those goddamned trees can be up to any good.