I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but around Middlebury, sex is in the air. And all over everything. It's the season when this very green state takes on a yellow cast, as the trees cast their pollen.
The
house's windows are closed on the windward side, because screens are no use for
trying to keep the stuff out. Car windows the same, no matter that the sun is
now at about the same position in the sky it will be on July 19. Dusted thou
art, if thee spends any time outside.
Not
being sensitive to the stuff, and not knowing anyone who has been to an
allergist and determined that they are (a lot of stuff causes allergic
reactions, plus there are pollutants that increase the likelihood of such
reactions), I looked up tree pollen allergy on Google, non-Boolean search. An
article titled "Trees 'n' Sneeze" from American Forests magazine said
that as of 1992, there were roughly 14 million such sufferers. "In fact,
according to what's known as the 'priming effect,' if you're allergic to one
kind of pollen, chances are you're allergic to several," wrote author
Laurie Gaines. Besides taking medications to control symptoms, "We can
also avoid pollen by staying inside, using air conditioning and an air filter.
This is especially effective once one knows what one is allergic to, which can
be determined by an allergist," she said.
So-what's
causing all this yellow stuff in Middlebury, which rain on Saturday washed into
yellow lines at the sides of puddles all through town? Pines, in all likelihood.
Gaines said they make the biggest, most visible pollen, and my wife, who has
lived near pines, said there are times when you can see clouds of gust-blown
pollen coming from them. But don't hasten to cut any down, because there's a
long list of trees producing problem pollen: "The most common are oak,
western red cedar, elms, birch, ash, hickory, poplar, sycamore, maple, cypress,
and walnut," is the Gaines list. She adds that since all trees produce
pollen, these may not be the culprits, either.
If
you think moving to the desert Southwest might save you, visit first while the
mulberries and junipers are putting out pollen. The former have been such a
scourge that Tucson outlawed planting more-but didn't seek to have the existing
trees cut down because so many people would plant sycamores or ash trees
instead-likewise pollenution producers.
Since
there's no getting rid of pine pollen, we might as well enjoy watching how the
trees do it. The cones, not the trees, come in two sexes, with the females in
the top of the tree to avoid self-pollination, which Is a mortal sin, or at
least would limit the gene pool and increase the chances of genetic
problems (my college bio prof said
we all carry eight lethal genes, on average, making human sex a kind of
rush-into roulette in which we hope the bullets don't fit the guns). The male
cones have scales that produce two pollen sacs, which release numerous gametes
(technical term), each accompanied by two air bladders to help them cover more
distance. The wind-blown male pollen finds its way to the ovules in the female
cones, over a couple of years seeds result, and after the cone has dropped to
the ground (sometimes years afterward, depending on the species-some need to
have rotting or fire or animal foraging release the seeds) they have a chance
of becoming new pine trees.
And
of producing more pollen, and so on and so on ad infinitum. As the Olympus
Microscopy Center (which provided the close-up of pine pollen that follows)
said in its description of the genus, "Pine trees are found
worldwide."