Melbourne tree injections trial to help hayfever sufferers

Melbourne trees are getting hormone injections to help allergy sufferers breathe easier this Spring.

A Melbourne City Council will target London Plane trees that make outdoor dining a nightmare in the busy cafe precinct of Lygon Street.

The trees are dropping seed pods that are being inhaled and ingested by diners, causing nasal, eye and throat irritation.

"There's so much of seed debris that it almost forms a separate froth on your Cappuccino," said Lord Mayor Robert Doyle.

The council began an experimental trial to ease the sneeze, injecting the trees in Southbank with a natural hormone, hoping to reduce flowering and seed production.

That trial failed, so now they are injecting the soil and spraying the tree's canopy.

Mr Doyle said: "It doesn't damage the tree at all, it just reduces the seed pod debris that goes absolutely everywhere in Melbourne's Spring."

The council's urban landscape manager, Ian Shears, told ABC radio cafe owners have welcomed the plan.

"If you look around the [CBD] around 75 percent of the trees are London planes, and Lygon Street in the cafe strip in particular is where probably most of the concerns from the community come from," he said.

"They want to enjoy their cappuccinos just with milk froth rather than anything else on top of it, I think."

If the latest trial is successful, the council says there will be widespread injecting next Spring.

News break - October 6