Pinus ponderosa
I love the piney woods. The woods around here are filled with Ponderosa pines, lovely, tall, vanilla-scented evergreens with 4-inch needles. The wind sighs through the pines…even one single pine can set the wind to sighing.
They are green and grand and stately.
They provide tasty morsels for the local squirrels to chow down upon; in the autumn, when wandering through the woods, one can encounter great heaps of stripped pinecones that have been nibbled to death and rendered oddly spiky-looking.
Of course, to grow those pinecones, the Ponderosas have to have (shhh!) sex.
Having sex, for vegetation, usually involves pollen.
A paper I found on the Ponderosa pine claims that in this area pine pollen production starts on June 10 and lasts until June 20.
May I just say: Bwahahahaha!
Whew. That felt good.
They’re lying through their teeth. Or else gl0bal warm1ng is true. Because we have been swimming in pine pollen now for weeks, and it is showing no sign of letting up. Rather, it is increasing.
Every morning, as the Dotter and I pile into the Little Green Car, I have to run the windshield wipers. Usually I also have to goose the washer button, because otherwise I have yellow streaks all over the windshield.
The (paved, ahhhh) streets now sport foot-wide streaks of yellow pollen wending down the hills.
The dashboard of our car is covered with yellow pine pollen.
I am sick of pine pollen.
OmegaDad is also sick of pine pollen; literally, in his case. He has a pine pollen allergy, and it is going full force this year. He hacks. He coughs. His nose is perpetually producing post-nasal drip. He’s not a happy camper.
So, when you travel into the piney woods, soaking in the verdant green and admiring the stately straightness of the trunks and reveling in the coolth and the gentle eggnog-scent, remember this: We people who live here? We suffer for your joy.
Just lettin’ ya know.
(Later in the summer, I will happily share with you the trials and travails of dealing with Ponderosa-pine-as-invasive-weed. All it takes is rain.)
Technorati: Pine trees, pine pollen, allergies
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