A tale of two households, part 1
Botanists use the term dioecious (with its first o silent), made from the Greek words for ‘two households,’ to describe a species in which there are separate male and female plants. A common dioecious tree in central Texas is the Ashe juniper, Juniperus ashei, a male of which is shown here in a closeup from January 14th in my Great Hills part of Austin. If you were in town that day, you may well have felt the effects of the pollen released into the air by millions of these tiny cones, each only about an eighth of an inch (3mm) long. That pollen is highly allergenic, and every winter many people in central Texas come down with what is called cedar fever. (The name is doubly wrong: there’s no fever, and cedar is what early settlers mistakenly thought this kind of juniper was). I certainly got clobbered by walking around in nature that afternoon, and I’d ask you to shed some crocodile tears for my suffering except that crocodiles aren’t native to Austin.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
A friend of mine caught one sunny day last week in her convertible and paid for it dearly blaming the “cedar.”
georgettesullins
February 3, 2014 at 6:14 AM
It’s not a good time of year for to be out in a convertible, is it? Most parts of the country are too cold, and down here we’re too “cedary” (plus, for a change, way too cold).
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2014 at 7:09 AM
What a great portrait of That Which Afflicts Us. Austin was at the epicenter this year, with a record 7,337 grains per cubic meter in early January. And my hill country friends thought they had trouble with 6,000 grains!
Today? Austin has 13 grains of “cedar pollen”. You’re good to go!
shoreacres
February 3, 2014 at 9:19 AM
I’d heard about the near-record density of juniper pollen here this winter. The male trees seem to be invigorated by the cold, of which we’ve had (and are still having) more than the usual amount. The low current pollen count that you cite makes me hope that we’re done for this year, but the continuing cold might make the trees try to give it one more go.
Steve Schwartzman
February 3, 2014 at 9:31 AM
Interesting.
raulconde001
February 4, 2014 at 9:17 PM
It is, even if it causes much suffering.
Steve Schwartzman
February 4, 2014 at 10:19 PM
Remind me not to visit in pollen season!
Gallivanta
February 6, 2014 at 10:50 PM
That would almost preclude a visit, because we have allergens of one sort or another through much of the year. I just searched Google for “allergy capital of the world” and it offered up a map with the caption “Map for allergy capital of the world.” Need I tell you that it was a map of Austin? At
http://www.nosneezes.com/allergy-info
you can scroll down a bit and read the section entitled “Austin, Texas: Allergy Capital of the World!”
Steve Schwartzman
February 7, 2014 at 7:00 AM
Oh My! And I thought our city had a problem. I would find Austin impossible 😦 Were most of the allergy causing plants introduced to the area; the result of man’s settlement in and around Austin?
Gallivanta
February 7, 2014 at 7:23 AM
As far as I know, most of the allergenic species here are native. Many parts of the country have some kind of ragweed, but we luck out with large quantities of giant ragweed, which can easily grow to 10 ft. tall:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/giant-ragweed/
As for the Ashe juniper in this post, it’s a native species, but it may have been more restricted in its range before German and Anglo settlers came here in the 1800s. After the settlers plowed the land, Ashe junipers might have taken hold in more places than before. Whatever their history, Ashe junipers are very common here now. There’s even a male tree in my yard.
Steve Schwartzman
February 7, 2014 at 8:25 AM
Interesting. Our native species suffered or were overwhelmed by the European invasion that came with settlement. They struggle to this day. A coloniser weed which gives me, and many others, allergies is plantain http://www.huha.org.nz/Plantain.html , http://www.allergy.org.nz/site/allergynz/files/Annual%20Pollen%20Calendar.pdf
I think I have a plantain in this post I wrote some time ago http://silkannthreades.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/another-take-on-the-groynes/
Gallivanta
February 7, 2014 at 6:03 PM
We certainly have our share of invasives in the United States, including Plantago major, but we also have plenty of native species. A cute, fuzzy one in central Texas is Heller’s plantain:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/?s=plantago
When I visited Australia in 2005, I was walking on a path one afternoon and found a species of lantana that’s native in Austin but has become an invasive nuisance in Australia. It goes both ways.
Steve Schwartzman
February 7, 2014 at 6:56 PM
That’s very cute and fuzzy. Lantana is a nuisance invasive species here too. It is also the name of a film. I don’t quite see the connection between the weed Lantana and the Australian film of the same name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantana_%28film%29 but apparently there is one.
Gallivanta
February 7, 2014 at 7:45 PM
It’s strange for me to hear of lantana described as a weed, when it has such bright flowers:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/swallowtail-butterfly-on-texas-lantana/
Steve Schwartzman
February 7, 2014 at 11:49 PM
It looks beautiful in your photo and it is in real life too. When I was a child in Fiji, farmers were supposed to clear their properties of lantana because it was poisonous to their livestock. http://solutionsforyourlife.ufl.edu/hot_topics/agriculture/toxic_plants.html
Gallivanta
February 8, 2014 at 2:42 AM
Guess I’d better cancel the lantana stew I was going to prepare for supper.
Steve Schwartzman
February 8, 2014 at 6:27 AM
Umm, yes 😀
Gallivanta
February 8, 2014 at 6:41 AM
Yep, we’ve experienced the sneezy, itchy, lung-clogging (ooh, now I’m picturing pollen granules all gussied up in flounces and clog dancing in a lung/lounge) joys of so-called cedar fever. Pretty plant, but what a pest, eh!
kathryningrid
February 10, 2014 at 5:31 PM
Now there’s a unique, imaginative description: “pollen granules all gussied up in flounces and clog dancing in a lung/lounge.”
Steve Schwartzman
February 10, 2014 at 8:28 PM
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