Do you get hay fever? I feel fortunate that I don't suffer from this affliction. No runny nose, watering eyes or sneezing, no matter how bad the pollen count. It's a good thing. The website that offers such information, www.pollen.com, is recording record numbers for East Canaan, Connecticut, 10.4 when 12 is tops.
The pollen grain may seem like an insignificant piece of fluff, but it is actually the male sperm of the flower world. From the minute it leaves the anther of a stamen, this tiny dot of protoplasm becomes a tiny spark of life, the male half of a pro-embryo, searching to locate its female counterpart. It may be too minute to be seen by the human eye, but its nuclei contain half the chromosomes needed to conceive the next generation.
Except in self-pollinated plants, a pollen grain is completely dependent on the whim of the wind or the wings of an insect for transport. If it is lucky enough to be carried to the stigma of the right flower, it takes in the stigmatic fluid, swelling with the absorbed moisture until it begins to grow a tube. This tube, lured by tempting chemicals released from the ovule, will grow down through a long style or up into a nodding flower's pistil, working its way between the cells to reach its hidden counterpart, the female half of a pro-embryo. These two fractions of life, once united, fuse their nuclei, combining the chromosomes, and a new life is born in the form of a seed.
But just suppose that pollen grain and a few of its billions of brothers, landed in your eye or your nose instead of on the pistil of a flower. You, too, will secrete chemicals, but less tempting ones than those produced by an ovule. The mucous membranes of a human's respiratory tract contain antibodies, proteins called IgE. When a pollen's protein meets the IgE protein in your nose, they combine, triggering the release of histamine and other powerful chemicals. These chemicals are what cause the runny eyes and stuffed-up noses of hay fever.
A great many hay fever victims think
that goldenrod is responsible for their
misery. They're totally mistaken. The 80
or 90 varieties of Solidago do produce
pollen at this time of year, but their
pollen grains aren't dispersed by the
wind. These composites actually have
very sticky pollen that is transferred from
the anthers of each stamen to the flower's pistil
by insects. Their pollen never gets to fly
around in the breeze.
Here in the Northeast it is ragweed's pollen that is the big culprit. Ragweed's flowers are so drab and colorless that even the homeliest wasp would find them unattractive. They depend on the wind to spread their pollen. Using summer breezes as a method of transportation may be as precarious as hitch-hiking, but since a roadside ditch is often the best destination, a few hundred out of the estimated million pollen grains produced by a single plant usually manage to survive.
Ragweed's Latin name is Ambrosia, a bit of a misnomer. Food of the Gods? Well, maybe it was named in honor of the canaries and pheasants who find its seeds so delectable, but our sheep consider the plant too bitter to eat. As a consequence we have lots of ragweed in our pastures. If you have this weed on your property and you suffer from hay fever, cutting it down before it sends out its clouds of pollen is worth doing as it is an annual. Actually you can just pull the plants up by the roots in most cases.
Another weed that can be blamed for your running nose and watery eyes is mugwort. When I looked up this silly-sounding weed, I found that it is none other than Artemisia vulgaris, a close cousin to the silver queen in my garden, Artemisia ludoviciana. Sure enough, I found plenty of these plants spreading their pollen around Locust Hill.
MUGWORT SMARTWEED
Most hayfever victims don't even know what mugwort looks like. The photo on the left is Mugwort. The one on the right is Lady's thumb or smartweed, Polygonum persicaria, one of the few weeds with some color. Its little spikes of pink flowers produce pollen, but not a lot. I just thought you might like to know its name so you can impress your friends next time you run across it.
This is a beautiful time of year, provided you don't suffer from hay fever. No bugs, no broiling sun, and pretty soon, serious displays of color as the leaves begin to turn. Enjoy.
