Author: Tom Ogreg (San Luis Obispo, CA, USA)
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Categories: [cool]  [nature]  

I was working on a book about how to landscape your house so that nothing in your yards would cause you or your family any allergies. My wife, Yvonne, had asthma and I was trying to do something useful. I'd been working on this project for years already and had discovered that male trees and shrubs produced the most pollen, triggered the most allergies.

I'd also figured out that female trees and shrubs didn't produce any pollen; they were pollen-free. However, to my complete surprise I found that female trees (considered messy since they produced seeds, pods, or fruit) were almost never used. What was happening was that each year these modern "litter-free" landscapes were pouring out more and more pollen. Allergies and asthma were increasing rapidly and I had a very good idea why this was. But in those days no one would publish my work; no one was interested in what I had to say about it.

14 years ago: It was springtime and my 8-year-old son, Josh, and I were in our backyard, playing wiffle ball. Josh slammed a hard foul ball and it went straight into a big yew pine bush that was growing right next to his sister Naomi's bedroom window. A huge puff of what looked like smoke came from the shrub and I said to Josh, "Look at all that pollen!"

My son looked at me and then asked me something no other kid in the world would have asked his dad. "Dad," he said, "is that a male tree?"

Growing up in our house he had often heard me talking about male and female trees, and how males shed so much allergenic pollen.

I was embarrassed, because indeed it was.

"Yes," I told him, "it is a male tree."

And next he asked me, "Then why is it growing in our yard?"

Ah, wisdom from the mouth of babes. I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to explain why I'd left it there. “When we get done playing ball,” I said, “we’ll cut it down.” And we did just that. A week later we replaced it with a female shrub.

I thought this was the end of the story but some years later when I mentioned this incidence to someone, Yvonne said, “Don’t you remember what happened because of that tree?”

We’d moved into this house and within months our daughter, Naomi, then 10 years old, started getting sick. Each morning she’d wake up with a sore throat, a terrible headache. This went on for months and then she suddenly got well again. The next spring it happened all over again. We took her to doctor after doctor but none of them could figure out what was wrong.

“After you and Josh cut down that bush,” said Yvonne, “Naomi got better right away and she never had those problems again.”

I was staggered to have missed the connection.

I now know that yew pine pollen is not only highly allergenic but that it is also poisonous. Yew pines are related to true yews (genus, Taxus) from which the chemo cancer drug Taxol is made. The millions of tiny poisonous yew pollen grains must have been passing through Naomi’s window screen and landing on her face as she slept in bed. No wonder she felt so bad each morning!

One day I shook some yew pollen on a glass slide and looked at it through my microscope. Curious, I found a small piece of window screen and set it on top of the glass slide. I wanted to see what sort of protection the window screen actually was. And even though I knew what to expect, I was amazed at what I saw. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand grains of this pollen could pass simultaneously through each square hole in the window screen.

I photographed this through my microscope so that others could see exactly what I’d seen. As far as I know this is the first time this has ever been photographed.

Other submissions by this author: :  Seagulls  :

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