Thanks so much for the post and the link. This needs to get out there far and wide. I'll be telling everybody I know.
I am sick of these motherfucking trees having sex in my sinuses. (OK, just the guys.)
Allow me to be the first to suggest that people assuage some of their allergy woes by use of a neti pot. No silver bullet, but it certainly helps to keep the the tree babies flushed out of your nose.
4: One of my gardening-type books mentions landscapers who buy male grape vines, because they want to have a grape vine, without all that hassle of fresh grapes.
Why do all these male plants keep blowing my nose?
But fruit is great! You can eat it!
If only there were some way of gathering it for people to eat.
6: I find those to hold up to repeated usage much better than the plastic ones, which inevitably end up gummed up with cocaine after like three evenings out.
Maple, elm, oak fruits aren't really that delicious.
Other than poison ivy, I've never had an allergic reaction to anything. Springs like this one drive home just how lucky that is, because holy cow the pollen has been just unbelievable this year. Almost like sand at the beach.
oak fruits aren't really that delicious
JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT.
LISTEN TO THE SQUIRREL
According to a doctor I knew, the pollen that you can see does not cause allergies. It's the microscopic stuff. Anyway, I had an unpleasant week for allergy reasons, but nothing like when I lived in the south.
I use silver bullets.
Coors Light™ neti potting? Ew.
And your face turns blue like the Rockies when you're done!
And ancient agricultural societies take shelter in your jowls.
Can I just use this post to note that the pervasive "eat local honey to cure allergies" thing is wrong and absurd? I'm all for eating local honey, but pollen allergies are produced by windborne pollen. Honey comes from plants that produce insectborne pollen. There's no overlap.
Carry on.
Good point. It could put a dent in pervasive insect allergies, though.
According to a doctor I knew, the pollen that you can see does not cause allergies. It's the microscopic stuff.
That's wrong too. For example, the mountain cedar (aka ashe juniper) pollen around here is quite visible. When it's cedar pollen season, it almost looks like the woods are smoldering due to all the big smoky drifts of pollen blowing about. Ragweed pollen isn't microscopic either. Nor is oak pollen. The oaks this year are pouring out these mustard yellow clouds of the stuff. It's the heaviest oak pollen production I've seen in my lifetime.
I get wicked allergies really early in the change of season, and then, after that, nothing. I had a bad spell back in early March, but now it's over. Is that not allergies? It happens every year.
This has been the worst season of the last 5 or so years for others' allergies, and perversely, the best spring I've had in terms of allergies.
Allergies in March is allergies.
OT, but I want Heebie to know that every time I stay out late with friends, I find myself reciting your poem from childhood about the Beastie Boys on my way home. It is an earworm.
Every microgametophyte is sacred.
...as the bushop said to the saptress.
25: He wasn't an allergist, nor was I seeing him in a clinical capacity.
I'm kind of amazed at how aware you all are of the pollen every year. But then, despite my mom filling out "hay fever" under allergies on school health forms until I could finally fill out the forms myself, I can't remember spring allergies being a regular part of my life. Whatever might have been allergies cleared up when I quit swimming.
There are still many trees with no or few leaves up here.
I'm kind of amazed at how aware you all are of the pollen every year.
It's hard not to to notice that all the cars in any given parking lot are donning a soft yellow fuzzy blanket all the time, at least in Virginia.
34: Yes, North Carolina was like that. My brother lived in Atlanta and he said sometimes enough pollen fell to cause car accidents. Apparently, it gets slippery in vast amounts.
I guess if I had lived in places in the East where there were trees instead of concrete and pavement, I'd have noticed too.
Can I just use this post to note that the pervasive "eat local honey to cure allergies" thing is wrong and absurd?
What should I eat for a pervasive allergy to honey, then?
I swallowed a horse for my dog allergy. I swallowed a dog for my cat allergy. I swallowed a cat for my bird allergy. I swallowed a bird for my spider allergy. I swallowed a spider for my fly allergy. I don't know what allergy I was addressing by swallowing the fly.
Also,
OT, but I want Heebie to know that every time I stay out late with friends, I find myself reciting your poem from childhood about the Beastie Boys on my way home. It is an earworm.
this makes me very happy.
I don't know what allergy I was addressing by swallowing the fly.
Human contact.
I don't know what allergy I was addressing by swallowing the fly.
Metis.
34, 36:
Yeah, GA pollen is like the fucking Harmattan.
26:
This sounds like leaf mold allergies to me. My brother would that really bad and looked like he'd been punched in the face each spring and fall.
This sounds like leaf mold allergies to me.
It's mole?
I'm listening to the Beastie Boys RIGHT NOW!
Anyway, semi-OT, I was at the Stupid America a couple of hours ago, and the clerks were talking about burying placentas to grow a placenta-plant. It was one of those situations where disabusing someone of their ridiculous notions is like teaching a pig to sing.
Also, there's a male gingko tree in front of my house. The neighbors have a female. I vastly prefer the male. I haven't noticed particularly nasty odors from the neighbors' tree (which apparently is a common complaint), but the fruits sure is messy.
I like to think the reason heebie held on to this article for several weeks before posting it is that she spent all that time coming up with this post title.
Here's the NY Times op-ed that might have inspired Becks.
haven't noticed particularly nasty odors from the neighbors' tree (which apparently is a common complaint)
Oh my word is it ever. Worst-smelling naturally occurring (other than rotting garbage, etc.) scent I have ever smelled.
When I don't want to TOUCH my car because it's covered with tree spooge and sap, I feel rather grossed out.
We had a huge mulberry tree on one side of our drive and the pollen was nasty. Though the side effects (because of an ample bird population) of a female mulberry tree are totally rude...
Female ginkos are a whole 'nother level of issue, they smell like "poussee" when they're fruiting. I'd rather not smell that in the outdoors for some strange reason. It is one of the rudest plant scents in our neighborhood.
Bradford pears, usually the first trees to blossom here, smell like semen.
My undergrad alma mater has the path between the quad and the library path lined with female ginko trees. It's a real problem when they're fruiting, with people tracking the fallen fruit into buildings.
apo! you are the only other person I know who recognizes that!
For years I've been trying to figure out what the trees are around here that are the first ones to flower and smell like semen, but never knew who to ask. Thanks apop.
I have friends who refer to some kind of tree as "the jizz trees" -- guess those are they!
The flowers look like dogwood flowers so that's what I called them, but it never seemed right.
I'm pretty sure at least half of all girls have tried to masturbate the pollen off a dogwood tree.
Are Bradford pears the same as fruitless pears? Because, yeah. I'm half-convinced that not all of the population can smell them, because every time I try to point out that those trees have a very pronounced smell, no one seems to agree with me.
Yeah, it's a fruitless pear tree that puts out tons of white flowers at the very beginning of spring.
Sounds right. I think the almonds beat them to the flowering here, but it must be the same thing. (Because, really, how many trees could make an entire street smell like a back alley brothel?)
62: Ailanthus does a pretty good job, actually. Tree of heaven, my foot.
Hmm, I've never noticed a smell from the trees of heaven...I guess I'm just going to have to start breathing more deeply.
We call it "tree of hell". And it does indeed stink.
Unfair, you just think it stinks because it always grows in harbage dumps.
