BOTANICAL 



TORREYA 



Vol. 36 July-August, 1936 No. 4 



Pollen in Hayfever* 



R. P. VVOUEHOUSE 



All true hayfever is caused by pollen. Now that this point 

 is quite certain 'poUinosis' would be a more appropriate name 

 for the malady, that is if one wishes to be strictly scientific and 

 correct. But now that we all know that hayfever is not a fever 

 and is not caused by hay there can be no harm in calling it 

 hayfever. Indeed the term has the advantage of picturesqueness 

 and falls into the same category as welsh rabbits, cow-catchers, 

 and dog-tooth violets. Of course there are other substances 

 which cause the symptoms of hayfever, such as orris root in 

 face powder, box-wood sawdust of the jeweler, castor pumice 

 used as fertilizer, or even ordinary wheat flour used in baking, 

 but symptoms from these causes are by definition excluded and, 

 anyway, they generally resemble asthma more closely than 

 hayfever. 



Since all true hayfever is due to pollen the malady follows 

 the cycle of the seasons. First there is the early spring hayfever 

 which comes, in the Torrey Club area and several hundred miles 

 around in all landward directions, in the earliest spring, almost 

 as soon as the frost leaves the ground. This is due to the early- 

 flowering trees which take advantage of their leafless condition, 

 perhaps also of the comparative scarcity of hungry insects, to 

 scatter their wind-blown pollen. This is followed in May by the 

 early summer type of hayfever which is called "rose cold," a 

 practice which cannot be condoned because it sometimes leads 

 the uninitiated to believe that roses have something to do with 

 it. In reality it is caused almost entirely by grasses, helped a 



* A second part of this paper, dealing with the structure of pollen grains 

 will be published in the September-October number of Torreya. 



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