Breathing Botany’s Baby Batter: A Pollen-Season Memoir (04/07/2026)

Or, the Yellow Haze of Spring

It’s spring. The days are getting warmer; the birds are chirping; the daffodils in our garden have finished flowering; leaves are popping out everywhere; the redbuds and dogwoods are blooming; the May flowers have woken up—and yes, there is pollen everywhere.

Pollen is so thick right now that our gray deck is yellow, and you can watch it drift over the boards when there’s even a slight breeze. Our concrete driveway is yellow, and the vehicles are coated, too. While the major culprit in our pollen plague is the loblolly pine, it started earlier with the maples and oaks. They announced the start of pollen season about two weeks ago.

The first time I mentioned pollen on this blog was in 2014. My first post was in June 2013 (wow—13 years ago), so April 2014 was more or less the first time I could have complained about it in these pages. I think I mentioned it every year since. Spring pollen has been a perpetual issue here in Virginia (and farther south). For a few weeks, the sky looks yellow and—somehow—everything else does, too. We were walking along the York River and clouds of yellow dust drifted over the water from the shore. When you walk the dogs in our neighborhood and a gust of wind kicks up, you get a face full of the stuff and your eyes sting from all the tiny particles. Even your shoes turn yellow after a stroll through the grass or along a forest trail.

I had a perverse sense of humor when I was still teaching—actually, I still have a streak of it. I’d ask my students if they knew what pollen was: plant sperm. Tree sperm. “Now everyone, take a deep breath in through your nose and inhale all that sperm through those nostrils into your lungs.” A few weeks later, the water in my rain barrels smells horrible. Rotten eggs smell like perfume compared to this brew. Pollen has a high protein content, and all that protein has to break down—ferment, rot, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve always assumed this liquid is fine to use on my bonsai; I’m sure it must be nutrient-rich. And, over the years it hasn’t killed a plant yet.

Soon, this pollen episode will be a thing of the past. We’ll have forgotten it until the end of March next year when it begins again. Now, the seasons will get warmer, and summer will be upon us. Heat and humidity will be there, and maybe a chance of hurricanes? Let’s just hope I can keep complaining about pollen on our deck and cars for a few more years.

Our deck covered by pollen

Spring is springing (3/26/2020)

Spring is springing and it is springing more crap than I had ever hoped for:

1. Yes, we have the regular allergies and pollen raining down. The world is slowly turning yellow. It is raining and our runoff leaves a yellow ring around the collar (or the high-water marks).
2. Of course, we are all impacted by the corona virus. Whatever you think about it, who’s fault it is, you name it. I have my biases and I may hint about them below (but then if you are a regular reader it should not surprise you). 
3. As part of the virus and my age, I am stuck at home, teleworking 5 days a week. This is a different experience. 
4. For a person my age, I have been sort of ordered form the Governor that I should shelter in place and not get out unless completely necessary. This brave person went out for the first time this past Saturday after 10 days “house arrest” and again the other morning to pick up medicine for Jake, who is still hanging on. 
5. And now for the kicker, word came down that we need to start using the hotel points that we accumulate during our travels for the state to book hotel stays for the state, instead of using for our own. 

It is this last point that has me bent out of shape today. It seems to be the result of a complaint by and unethical employee who was fired because of her unethical conduct. Now the State Inspector General seems to be changing the policy for all state employees because of the complaint by one unethical person who obviously had a grudge. Again, it seems to be a complaint filed by an anonymous employee as way to get even. She is as disgruntled employee; and remember to get fired from the state is difficult; you can murder someone and not get fired. 

So, I had to work on a spreadsheet detailing all the points I had accumulated over time. Moreover, now I am being issued a state credit card so I cannot even accumulate points for my travel on my personal credit card. 

Yes, I am sure there will be a lot of you who will be pulling out that tinny violin out for me and start playing it, telling me that if I don’t like it, to get the hell out off Dodge. When I was working for industry, I never had to do that; I was allowed, actually encouraged, to use my hotel points for private travel. And yes, I guess I should go back to industry and go from protecting the environment to not giving a damn or at least being cavalier about it; or maybe I should retire. Retirement would be great, were it not for a presidential mismanagement of a Corona virus pandemic; mismanagement that somehow screwed up my retirement plans. So, fuck you all, I’ll be occupying a job of some unemployed guy until me IRA is back to the level it was a month ago, unless the Corona virus gets me first. That is even though I don’t get free hotel stays any longer for being away from home night after night. 

One of the ponds behind our home.  You can see the yellow pollen ring around the the base of the trees growing in the water.

Well some spring it is. Although I am under “house arrest” I can go for walks in the abandoned woods in the back of our home. My outdoors bonsais have all been repotted, nature is awakening, fresh bread came out of the oven, I am teleworking, and I still have innovative ideas. I just need to make sure that I get credit for those new ideas (but more about that some other time). There still is a lot to celebrate in these anxious times. Let me know how you are doing! To all my readers, wash your hands, try to be positive, love thy neighbors, stay healthy, and be well.

My little quince cutting that I have been trying to grow is finally taking off and is flowering this spring.  Crazy but fun.

Species diversity (4/13/2018)

I am reading an interesting book, in it the author discusses how by the end of the 1700 people started doubting the creation story in the bible.  By that time, explorers and naturalists had fanned out all over the world and the sheer number of different species blew them away.  For example, the Duchess of Portland, Margaret Bentinc was a species collector and purchased samples from naturalists who returned from their exploratory travels. At her death she had thousands of species.  It seems that the auction of her collection in 1785 lasted 38 days.

It was therefore no surprise that around the 1800, people were starting to wonder how all these species could have fit on Noah's arc, let alone travel from all over the world to get there on time.  You get the message.  In a way, this together with what they found in the fossil record made them ready for a person like Charles Darwin.

No, I don't want to argue evolution in this post, but just the diversity of species in the woods behind my home. Although, I could talk about evolution to some extent since one of the plants back there is running cedar or ground pine (Diphasiastrum digitatum).  This plant is actually considered one of the older species alive in our area.  It was most likely here when the dinosaurs were roaming around.  How do we know?  Well, it is in our fossil record.   In addition, it has a very primitive way of sexually reproducing.  It actually produces spores (that used to be collected for use as flash powder) that, once they fell on the soil, grew subterranean and developed male and female parts.  The male parts would release a sperm cell with a tail and swim to the female part to fertilize it.  The sperm cell could only do that when it and the female part were submerged in water or had a water drop on it.  Only after fertilization did you get a plant that emerged out of the ground.  

That is pretty primitive isn't it?  Later on in evolutionary time, plants found a much more efficient way of doing this which was to produce pollen and make us all sneeze.  Only us animals never figured a better way to do it.  Or, maybe we did ... the male animals developed an organ (a.k.a. penis) to deposit the sperm cell pretty darn close to the egg cell or at least in an environment where it is nice, warm and wet and thus easy swimming for those little guys; no rain drops needed.

Running cedar is not the only evolutionary old plant in the woods behind our home.  Ferns are also among the oldest species, and actually they breed the same way as running cedar, through spores.  A minor exception is that their spores turn into moss and a lot of the moss we see is actually ferns that are waiting for the correct moment to get fertilized and become real ferns.  They all have the male and female parts and if a water drop (or more) would straddle a male and female sexual organ a sperm cell would also swim over and kaboom, we would get a new baby fern plant growing right in the middle of the moss.  This has happened in my bonsai pots, to my frustration, where I thought I had a nice moss carpet.  I also saw it on a bonsai channel I was watching on YouTube.  

Botanists have therefore lumped the ferns and the running cedars into one group called the Pteridophytes or plants that reproduce via spores.  Walking behind our home I often see Christmas fern, royal fern, cinnamon fern, New York Fern, lady fern and sensitive fern (6 different species). 

I think this is enough species diversity for one post, the Pteridophytes in the woods behind our home.  But just a quick update on a previous post.  The pines are in full bloom (if you are allowed to call it that).  There is pine pollen everywhere.  This means it is about on time or maybe a few days earlier than other years, even though we had a cold March.  Something to think about.  Not sure what other group of plants I'll write about next, (maybe the conifers) stay tuned!

It is pine pollen season alright (photo taken on 4/13/2018).  On my Instagram account I called it ring around the collar.  

  

Law and order in the woods (4/3/2018)

I have joined a (sermon) writing class at my Unitarian Universalist Church (which is probably why I did not post anything in March). While one of my fellow writers is absolutely hilarious while at the same time being very philosophical, we are all different but good in our own way. Although I feel that they are in a different league (much higher than me), I have had a chance of surprising my fellow writers by some of my experiences and thoughts. I am of course am the naturalist of the group and have been milking experiences like being bit by a moccasin and the quote by John Muir about passing between two pines and entering into a different world that I used in my previous blog post. It will be something that I will be using in my sermon if I ever get brave enough to give one.

Brave enough may be a stretch, truth be told, as a teacher I stand in front of a class one to two days a week and often feel that I am not a teacher, but a motivational speaker. I am such a strong believer in doing right to the environments and in environmental ethics, in particular for future generations that I have no problem getting in front of people and talking about that at length. As I have often written, we as intelligent beings on this blue marble in space have the responsibility to keep it livable for our and future generations; simply said, there is no other place to go.

After my day-long solo workshops I often get an applause. It is the best feeling when one or two of my students come to me at the end of the class and shake my hand, thanking me for such a great instructive class. I honestly feel that maybe I have inspired at least those one or two errand souls to do right to the environment. However, I am told that I will need to read my sermon and as a dyslexic that can be a challenge. I am not afraid of public speaking, but I am afraid of public reading.

My fellow spiritual writing students are amazed when I tell them that I escape to nature to get some order in my life; that I do this to get away from this absolutely out of control society. The group (everyone is over 35 years old) looks at me like I am crazy. They see a jumbled mess of branches, crap on the forest floor, and more junk, while I see order, predictability, rhythm, peace and quiet. This difference in seeing and experiencing things really amazes them, as well as me.

Look at the rhythm of all those tree trunks, the repetition, yet different structure. 

So let’s look at it. Trivial as it may be it starts out with the sun coming up every morning, with the days lengthening in spring and shortening in fall. Seasons are so important in nature, but so is day length or even the color of the light hitting the seed. For example, in the past two years I have complained in my blogs about the pine pollen (on the 18th and 19th of April on two consecutive years). We had such a weird spring this year, so I wonder when it will be this year; stay tuned. But even after such a cold March my recent walk in the woods show that the buds or candles in the pines are starting to grow, so pollen season cannot be far behind. The water in the ponds behind our home comes up in late fall, early winter, to peak in early March and then to recede and dry up by July. This is what makes it possible for the salamanders and frogs to breed in these pools; although this is the second year that we have not heard many of them. Hopefully some of the things described in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book entitled “The Sixth Extinction” isn’t playing itself out behind out home. In one of the chapters of the book she describes how environmental pollution is reducing the reproductive success of amphibians like frogs, toads and salamanders. The trees in the pond have a yellow pollen ring around them from the flowering maples. This ring will become more intensely yellow when the pines drop their pollen.

Spring is coming, this high bush blueberry is starting to bloom and spreading its pollen 

When looking at trees in a forest, you will see that the canopy of trees will usually barely touch and that they generally will not intertwine. Yes there are exceptions, but they will tend to give each space. As I mentioned previously, plants will wait for a hole to open up and then they will pounce. They have a chemical called phytochrome to thank for this. I have written before about self thinning in the woods. There is a very specific rule, the ⅔ rule or the self thinning rule that guides this. Foresters use this when they mechanically thin the woods. The phytochrome also helps seeds to “see” that there is an opening in the canopy. When there are leaves on the trees, the light hitting the ground is green. When a tree falls over and there is a hole, the light becomes more red (less green). The phytochrome in seeds can detect this and this can be a trigger in the seed to start germinating. Even in spring it may tell some of the seeds that it is spring and a may be a good time to try to germinate instead of summer when the leaves are on the trees.


Some trees practice mathematics in a different way. They may have a orderly distribution of branches. If you look at how a branch comes off a trunk and examine where the first branch is located on that particular branch, the next one may come of about ⅔ the original distance past that (or the first branch come off at 3 feet from the trunk, the next one will come off at 2 feet or 3 + ⅔ x3 feet, the next one would be 2/3x2 or 1.3 feet after the previous branch, etc. (yes there is lots of math in the woods, wow). In addition, branches are rarely thicker than the trunk or branch they branch come off. The only time that I have seen this happen was in New Mexico when I was studying mistletoe infections in Douglas fir and branches that were infected with mistletoe were much thicker than others, often thicker than the trunk. Mistletoe produces a hormone that tells the tree to bring all the water and food to the infected branch, which is why it grows so thick.

These are not set rules, but they do frequently apply and it is fun just to walk in the woods and see if you can discover more patterns like it. There are so many more to discover, certain habits of plants, of birds or even of certain animals. For me even all those vertical trunks, that repetition of those trunks throughout the woods as far as I can see gives me a feeling of order and comfort. They are like an an ancient European cathedral with pillars and high ceilings. The sun shining through the leaves are like the stained glass windows.

To me it is so much fun to be out there in the woods; the fresh air, the patterns to be discovered, or just to be out there, meditative, deep in your own thoughts, breathing in the forest air; you name it.

Chesapeake Bay (4/18/2015)

Finally, this was the first time this year that we went for a sail on our boat instead of the boat of a friend.  I like sailing in general, and yes, sailing on boats from friends is great.  Those boats are usually larger, and warmer.  Our friend Ben has a Catalina 30, of which he can enclose the entire cockpit and keep you out of the cold weather.  It was great sailing with him around Christmas time, while it was snowing outside, and on other cold days this winter.  But as a boy of the tropics, I prefer warmer weather, and of course nothing is better than sailing your own, even if it is inferior to other boats.

During our sail we had to test our new camera (an Olympus TG-3).  Yes I know not a Go-pro, but ; being an avid Olympus user all my life I just gravitated to this one.  Moreover, it does everything a Go-Pro does and then some.  We clipped the camera to the mast with a monopod and was able to take pictures using my cell phone as a remote.  I used my phone as a view finder and could use it to zoom in or out and take shots.  Great fun!  On the photo below you can see me operate the camera with my phone.

The weather was great, a few clouds in the sky and winds around 10 knots.  Temperatures were in the mid-70s, but with the wind over the colder water it was chilly.  During the sail we were reminded that it is pine pollen season on our part of the world, and if you are not from our part of the world you would not know what I am talking about.  During pine pollen season everything gets covered by a layer of fine yellow dust.  It is amazing.  While they say people are not allergic to pine pollen, on Sunday my body was not as happy as it usually is, the sky was yellow, and everything had a thin cover of yellow dust.  I wrote about it before (here) almost exactly a year ago (on 4/19/2014).  So interesting how closely nature is synchronized. 

With the first rainstorm streams are covered by a yellow slime and in a way it is actually indescribable.  The admiral (my wife) took a picture of a plume of pine pollen that we sailed through well off shore (maybe a mile or two) in the Chesapeake Bay (see the photo below).   What amazes me here that there must be this strange current in the water (or a combination of current and wind) that concentrates the pine pollen in this narrow band.  But you can see is goes quite the distance.

Yorktown (4/19/2014)



This is what I jokingly called leopard water.  Early spring we have a lot of pollen, and in particular the loblolly pines are going crazy.  Everything out-doors (and in-doors) is covered with a yellow dust.  In the morning you have to run your windshield wipers to be able to see.  Rainwater runoff becomes a stream of yellow water.  This is the only place where I have lived that I have seen it; but then I only lived in North Carolina in the fall.  I have many pictures of the ponds out back with a yellow film on them or even rings of yellow pollen on the trees in the pond that are left there once water retreats.

It was raining outback the day I took this picture and the solid sheen of yellow pollen was broken up in this leopard type color.  Really neat.  You can see the water drops.