“Keep love in
your heart. A life without it is like
a sunless garden
when the flowers are dead.”
~Oscar Wilde
Caroline, who does community outreach for FTD,
contacted me because she had recently helped contribute to a post which lists the
best and worst plants for your allergies based on the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale
and well, I’m a girl with allergies who likes to garden.
My mother’s strategy is to close the
windows and seals the doors basically boycotted the outdoors all together. I
would rather have itchy eyes and a sinus headache while the sun beams down on
my face. I love trees and flowers but sometimes they do not show much love for
me.
The first thing that I did before actually
reading the FTD post was scan down the list to see which plants I had in my
yard that were trying to kill me. That’s when I noticed that the most
allergenic trees are actually ones found in rural cemeteries. In fact, in The
Horticulturist, And Journal Of Rural Art And Rural Taste, the authors note that the juniper and the yew
trees were some of the more popular trees planted. Sigh.
Okay, so I really
cannot control the trees around me but I can consider what I plant in my own
backyard.
Fortunately the FTD
list includes foxgloves, violets, and impatiens as least allergenic plants.
Yay! The ones that I have in my yard are deep shades of purple. They’re just
lovely.
Now I’m just
itching to grow some flowers. Pun intended! Get it? Get it? :p
Interesting as I suffer from hay-fever, Cypress are the only trees to get me.
ReplyDeleteI've just always assumed all trees were out to get me ;) No need in having an allergy test for specifics when one is surrounded by woods.
DeleteThink of it this way ... most plants need a pollinator. Plants with showy flowers attract some type of animal pollinator (moths, bees, bats, etc.) and tend to produce less pollen which stays in the flower. Plants that rely on the wind for pollination (trees, lots of weeds, and corn) produce much more pollen which gets spread about as far as possible, hoping that the pollen will land in a receptive place so the plant can reproduce.
ReplyDeleteThis is the season where I start my day with a Claritin to help keep the allergy symptoms at bay. Last night, as we were lying in bed, I was sniffing and complaining that only one of my nostrils worked. Steve said, "It's fortunate for you that you only need one nostril to whine."
My partner and I both have hayfever although his is much worse, the kind that is basically like having the flu!
ReplyDelete