Hay fever and the evolution of pollination

(This woman is enjoying a good sneeze thanks to anemophily.)

April and May are my favorite months in upstate New York, because overt biological activity returns to the landscape. It is also my most miserable time—I suffer from allergies to pollen. My eyes water and itch, my nose tickles and runs, my throat is scratchy, and I sneeze a lot. I can take medicine but it makes me sleepy, and if I have to drive, being drugged is a bad idea. I am not alone. Approximately 20-30 million Americans suffer from outdoor allergies, mostly plant pollen. Although I have never been tested for the specific pollen to which I am allergic, I am pretty sure that maple, oak, ash, and possibly pine cause my problems, based on which flowering trees are in abundance near my house every year. I am also very allergic to grass pollen, so I simply stay out of meadows and hayfields during mid summer.

The enemy of those of us who suffer from allergies to plant pollen is “anemophily”. We all learned that flowering plants produce pollen, which is equivalent to sperm in vertebrates. The pollen must reach the plant carpel, or female part, of the plant so that the DNA in the pollen grain can join the DNA from the female gamete found in the ovule to produce a seed. We know that some plants are self-fertile, but others require that the pollen from the male structure get to a female flower elsewhere on the same plant, or to another female flower on another conspecific individual in the landscape. In some species, like aspen, you have male trees that produce only pollen, and female trees that produce only female flowers. So pollen often has to find a female flower of the same species somewhere in the landscape many meters or even hundreds of meters away. Most plants rely on insects, bats, or birds to move pollen from point a to point b, but about 20% of plant species rely on wind for pollen transport; this form of pollen dispersal is called anemophily. And those plants are the problem for hay fever sufferers, because their pollen is in the air to enter our eyes and nose.

Plants with showy, colorful flowers are always used in those television commercials that advertise an allergy medicine. You know the ones. The woman wants to garden, they show her walking through a yard full of black-eyed susans, Echinacea, lupine, and penstemon, and the scene implies that all those flowers are causing her itchy eye problem. Wrong! Plants that have large, or colorful, or aromatic flowers evolved those structures to attract some animal that can see or smell those characteristics. Those tend to be the plants we put in our gardens, because humans simply enjoy the sight. Plants did not evolve those beautiful structures for our enjoyment. Natural selection has responded to the potential suite of pollinators that existed out there. In fact, the tremendous diversification of flowering plant species coincides with the diversification of insect species during the Jurassic about 190 million years ago, although there is controversy surrounding the cause and effect of plant-insect evolution.

The plants that cause our problems are wind-pollinated, and they have small, inconspicuous flowers. How many of you know what a grass flower looks like? You need a compound scope to see them. But when they are at their peak flowering, if you hit the spike that contains those flowers, a small dust cloud of pollen will billow into the air. If I walk through such a field for 10 minutes, I need to reach for the Benadryl.

I have never suffered from hay fever in the tropics, however. This is curious, because there are many more plant species near the Equator than in upstate New York. But maybe that incredible diversity is part of the explanation as to why I am symptom-free in Costa Rica. There are many species, but it seems that the number of individuals in each of those species in any given location is not so great. The chances of a wind-blown grain of pollen landing on the female flower of another individual of the same species would seem to be low, or even remote, and not very efficient. If plants were selected naturally to develop a flower that attracts a particular species of fly or beetle or hummingbird, which visit to collect nectar or even pollen itself, that mobile organism is much more likely to visit another flower of the same species, probably within minutes. Many, but not all, of these animal pollinators are real specialists, and tend to visit only one species of plant. This is a much more focused system than relying on wind, which works just fine in the forest around my house where I have dozens of maple and ash and pine trees per acre, for example. (The story gets a bit more complicated. Red maple, which I have always thought caused my allergies, has small, red flowers. They are wind-pollinated, but they are also visited by bees. The fact that they are red suggests that they are not strictly wind-pollinated).

So now you have something to think about. It is fun to look at a flower and attempt to hypothesize what pollinates it. But also, the next time someone complains about their hay fever symptoms and points an accusing finger at the large yellow flowers growing along the side of the road, you can give a little fake sneeze and smile knowingly to yourself.

What if the last face you ever saw was David Schwimmer's?

(Would it be satisfying or pleasurable, or would it bring closure to your life, if David Schwimmer's face was the last image you ever saw?)

I had a very upsetting moment on a recent flight from Costa Rica to the states.  We were flying over the Caribbean when I looked up at the tv monitor above my seat and noticed that a rerun of the sitcom "Friends" was showing.  At that moment, David Schwimmer, one of the main actors in that series, was on the screen.  I had no earpiece so I had no idea what he was saying or what the scene was about.  At that exact instant, the plane hit some turbulence, the fuselage shook from side to side, and I had one of those fleeting thoughts in the air when you wonder if this is the time.  You know, "the" time when the plane goes into the ocean and you have to remember where the flotation device is actually located, even though you have been told its location by airline crews about 500 times.  But worse, what if the image of that goofy, forlorn face of David Schwimmer's was the last thing I was ever going to see?

This scenario occupied me for the next few days.  Maybe we should be more careful about what we observe, just in case it is the last image your brain ever registers.  I have labeled this the "Schwimmer effect"----the fear that the last image you see in life is something unsettling, ugly, unpleasant, or goofy.  Image if you had a fatal heart attack immediately after watching Anderson Cooper crying over a dead cat on CNN, or you were hit by a Mack truck shuffling across the street while looking at a pic of your ex-girlfriend still lingering there on your cell phone, or you drowned at the beach after startling Pee Wee Herman while he was urinating behind a sand dune wearing a Speedo suit and flip-flops.  These examples just prove there is a hell on earth.  You don't have to die to go there.

On the other hand, what if the last image David Schwimmer ever saw was that of DrTom?  You know, he heard about this blog, he came to this site, he was disturbed about what I had to say, he had a heart attack as he scrolled to the top of the page where there is a picture of me sitting on a horse, and he died.  Would the "DrTom Effect" be any less damaging to him than the "Schwimmer Effect" would be to DrTom?  These are questions worth pondering in Philosophy 101 this fall at institutions of higher learning around the world.  In fact, it would be informative to see a list of images created by respondents that they consider defining their "Schwimmer Effect".  Feel free to offer some suggestions in the Comments Section below.

So what should we do to avoid the "Schwimmer effect"?  Watch only National Geographic specials on tv---rivers, mountains, and polar bears.  A brief look at the Miss America contest is probably ok, as long as Rosie O'Donnell is not the host.  If you go to the movies, a flick like "Happy Feet" is good--mostly animated penguins.  Only use real trees at Christmas, not aluminum.  And if you must read blogs, read Huffington Post or DrTom.  And think only pure thoughts.

The symbolic chairs of Cornell and Costa Rica

(A Costa Rican rocker on the left and a Cornell chair on the right.  Which one holds the better memories?)

I returned home from Costa Rica this time with a rocking chair in a box.  If you have ever visited that incredible country, you have seen them in all the tourist shops for about $200.  It is a wooden chair frame of guapinol (Hymenaea courbaril), with seat and back made of leather tooled with Costa Rican scenes.  I always thought it was a handsome chair, and functional, but dreaded getting one back to the states.  But this time I bit the bullet and brought it home as checked luggage.  I love those chairs, and I look forward to using it in my home.

On the other hand, there is the wooden chair I could have gotten for free when I retired from Cornell University a couple of years ago.  This is the customary "going-away" gift for retired profs.  Some companies give their retirees a watch; Cornell gives you a chair.  Both gifts seem, well, stupid to me.  Does a retired 65-year old need a timepiece to know when to get up in the morning, when to eat dinner, or when the next meeting will begin?  And the Cornell chair seems to say, "go home, sit down, and read a magazine".  I just don't like either image.  So I refused the Cornell chair and asked for a small flat-panel tv instead, to which my department chair agreed after consultation with the administrative HQ in the "colonel's" office.  (The command and control structure of most universities is directly analogous to that of the chain-of-command found in the U.S. military, which I had the pleasure of enduring for three years.)

So I thought about my refusal of the free Cornell chair and the purchase of the Costa Rican chair quite a bit over the past two weeks.  Why is one repulsive to me and the other appealing to me?  There is nothing physically unattractive about the beautifully polished and spindled Cornell chair; something else is at work here.  As is so often the case, I think it is all about memories.

I spent nearly 30 years at Cornell, but the bond never really took.  This is exceptionally weird for me, because I normally develop a deep attachment with every organism and every habitat and most places with which I have ever spent significant time.  The Cornell campus is beautiful, but the place is an institution, and it is like most institutions.  It is somewhat unyielding, and dogmatic, and all business; it just happens that education is the commodity being marketed.  It is about results, and budgets, and beating out the competition.  Its weapons are public relations, a corporation-oriented Board of Trustees, and lobbying at the state and federal level. It is shiny on the outside, but stiff on the inside--just like its chair.  No matter how long you sit in its chair, its shape never changes, and it becomes uncomfortable.  In time, the shine wears off.  Whenever I was away for months at a time doing research or on a sabbatic leave, I never missed the place at all, not once.  Old faculty at a university die at their desks, alone.

On the other hand, Costa Rica is the only place other than my own home for which I feel true homesickness when I am not there.  I love the people, the food, the music, the climate, the biological diversity, and the spirit that is Costa Rican.  The country is beautiful, and friendly, and mysterious.  It is stable, and practical, and inventive--just like its chair.  The leather becomes soft and pliable with time, and it molds to the shape of your body.  Old Costa Ricans die while dancing with friends and family. 

The stark memories of my place of employment transferred to their parting gift, so I refused it.  The fond memories of the other place transferred to the functional product made there, so I bought one.  And so it goes throughout life.  Associations and memories influence decisions and conclusions about the experiences we have had, and tend to guide us through whatever is next.

Estonian, the root language of Homo sapiens

(An international gathering of young people discussing important issues in Estonian.)

I made the most amazing discovery on this vacation to Costa Rica.  Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of playing poker at the Adelante Hotel with several locals, including four Estonians.  The Estonians built and run this particular hotel along the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.  During the game, there was Spanish, English, and Estonian spoken interchangeably throughout the night.  After 4-5 hours and 5-6 rums I actually thought I was picking up on the lingo that is indigenous north of Latvia and south of Finland in the country called Estonia.

But then today, I was listening and trying to converse with my 2-year old grandson, who says some words an adult speaker of English would recognize, but mostly it is a hodge-podge of words and sounds that make no sense to me whatsoever.  He is obviously sure of what he is saying, and it is frustrating for him to get little or no reaction from most adults when he blathers.

My grandson was in the pool and I was sitting nearby when I decided to talk to him in unknown words to me, but what sounded to me a lot like the language I had listened to for hours at the Texas hold'em showdown at the Adelante.  To my surprise, my grandson lit up like a candle, began gesticulating to me from the pool, and vocalizing loudly, and had an expression on his face that said "finally, someone understands me". I believe he even winked knowingly at me, although at his age a gas-induced grimace looks about the same as a wink.  We jabbered back and forth for 5-10 minutes before it occurred to me.  He was speaking Estonian!

I had discovered the solution for which linguists had been searching for centuries.  All human babies, whether from Africa, or South America, or the Bronx are born speaking Estonian.  It is only after years of hearing the language of the country into which they are born that they forget the beautiful tongue that comes so naturally to them and they struggle to begin speaking French, or Russian, or English.  Estonian babies, of course, do not have to learn to switch to another language.  The young people I played poker with spoke at least three languages.  Of course they do, they did not have to start all over at age two by abandoning one language they already knew.

Did you ever wonder why babies enjoy the company of other babies so much?  They usually love going to some kind of child care and seeing others of their ilk.  It is because they can, at last, converse with someone in this world.  I am sure they talk over issues important to them about their home lives---whether they like strained peas or carrots, whether they need to wear those papery diapers as much as their parents think they do, or whether being the middle child is really so bad.  Just think if Estonians opened up child care centers all over the world.  There would be a flow of information between the adult and the baby generations the likes of which humans have never seen.  The only danger might be that non-Estonian babies would never want to give up the language that already works for them.  But perhaps, in time, seven billion people would be united under one language.

I think the solution to world peace, for achieving personal harmony in one's life, and for eliminating all sorts of interpersonal problems might be alleviated if we all learned to speak Estonian.  We would instantly find an ancient connection, and a personal familiarity, that goes back to the cradle or even the womb.  The world would be as one mass of contented 2-year olds who all speak the same language.  It would have to lead to a general feeling of well-being in the world.  Can you imagine a group of 2-year olds telling each other they are going to nuke Juan, or embargo Jana, or prevent Jane from joining the United Nations?  Of course not.  So get out that Rosetta Stone cd of the Estonian language and start studying for world peace, verb by conjugated verb.

Valentine's Day, Costa Rica!

(On our way to a recent Valentine's Day celebration.  Sometimes it just doesn't pay to dress for dinner.)

It was about as romantic a day as you could ever expect.  Yesterday was Valentine's Day, 2010, and my wife and I are in Costa Rica.  This is the only place I have ever been, other than my home in Ithaca, where I feel true homesickness when I am not here.  There is something special about the country that stays with you long after you leave, especially if you have experienced the richness that the place and the people have to offer.  Maybe there are dozens of other countries about which I could say the same if I knew them, but this is the place where I have a professional and a social history going back nearly 25 years.  I have memories of friends and family and habitats and organisms here that run wide and deep, and that is not easily duplicated in another place in a short lifetime.

In the morning, Robin and I met the guide from Southern Expeditions at Playa Pinuelas (pretend there is a squiggly accent over the "n", and pronounce accordingly) near Uvita.  We received our nautical instructions, along with four other couples, and we boarded the smallish skiff for our tour of Ballena Marine Park.  I awoke the night before almost regretting that I had agreed to this trip.  I am one of those who suffer from motion sickness; I don't have a pretty history of being on boats in the ocean.  Twice I went salmon fishing off the coast of Oregon years ago and I was the only one who got sick out of 20 passengers--both times.  I must be in the tail of the statistical distribution with respect to this particular affliction.  It is simply no fun vomiting for four hours in front of perfect strangers, and it is embarrassing.  I wanted to see this park, I needed to do it, I dreaded doing it, and I felt like a coward all at the same time.  It is like seeing a bare section of electrical cord leading from a wall outlet to your table lamp.  You just want to touch it to see if you get shocked.  And when you feel that ZAP!, you have your answer and you are good to go for another 20 years.

The skiff sped away from the beach and we headed for the open ocean to look for whales and dolphins.  I had tried medications before, and they never helped, so I didn't even bother this time.  I couldn't remember what the sailors advise to avoid sea sickness---watch the horizon, don't watch the horizon, focus on something in the boat rather than on the water.  I decided I would keep my eyes closed as much as I could.  With sunglasses on, no one would notice.  Even my wife, who was holding my hand, must have assumed that she and I were enjoying the same view of the ocean, and the sun, and the islands.  Wrong!  I wasn't seeing a thing.  From past experience, I would know soon enough if this was going to work, or if I was going to spoil the trip for that German couple who was sitting downwind of me.  Gott in Himmel, let this "eyes closed strategy" work.

I don't believe in the American god, but I guess the German god really exists, because an hour passed on the boat and I still felt fine.  I decided to open my eyes and look around.  Pretty nice.  We saw no marine mammals, but we did some snorkeling, looked at some sea caves, and learned something about coastal topography.  At the end, my wife was happy, I was happy, and the German couple sitting behind me was happier than they could have possibly realized.

But the creme de la creme was later that evening at the Villa Leonor, where I had made reservations for a Valentine's dinner.  The place is nothing fancy and, frankly, I wasn't expecting the evening to flip my wig.   The place is run by Cliff, an ex-pat from Colorado, and his tico wife Anna.  The original plan was for the guests to come at 5pm for drinks on the beach, and to watch the sunset.  Then, we would all retire to the open-air restaurant of theirs about 200 meters back from the beach for live music and dinner.  We had preordered our dinners the day before.  The formula was as romantic as one could construct on paper for this day of days for sweethearts.

But about an hour before we were to leave the house to go to the Villa, it started to rain, really, really hard.  It rained so hard that a large tree fell down near our house, knocking out the electricity for the next 12 hours.  But we had ordered our dinners already, and we thought we owed it to Cliff to show up for the food he had probably gotten in specially for this night.  We drove in a pounding rain to the place.  When we got to the parking lot, Cliff greeted us with an umbrella and escorted us into the bar area.  He obviously had to cancel the beach soiree (pretend there is an accent aigu over the first "e", and pronounce accordingly, but this is French, not Spanish, like the last word I provided instructions for).  Cliff brought us a complimentary cocktail, and we then realized that his electricity was also off.  About ten couples are coming for a rather elegant dinner on a special day and the guy has no electricity just as he is about to prepare a 3-course meal.

But Cliff is laughing and seems totally calm, and says something about making do when in Costa Rica, and my wife is trying to make him feel relaxed during a probable tense time like she usually does, which makes me feel less relaxed because her ruse is so obvious to me, because I have known her for so long and I have seen her do this a thousand times before.  Basically, Cliff's message was, "we have no electricity, so let's party".  Guests kept arriving, and we all sat around while it poured like the devil only a few feet away, and I could hear frogs calling in the rain under the eaves of the open structure with the thatched roof.  Candles were lit everywhere, and it was wonderful!  Cliff went around to each guest and asked them how they wanted their food cooked, not one person complained about anything, and the orders were sent to the kitchen.  Turns out they cook with gas, so the kitchen was lit up with flashlights and candles and they proceeded.

At about this point, a young man from San Isidro picked up his guitar and began to sing.  He continued for about two hours with a fantastic collection of old and new ballads, some in Spanish and some in English.  He was surprisingly good.  Our dinners came, the music continued, and about this time, the electricity came back on.  I realized that my first impulse was one of disappointment.  We were eating my candlelight before the power came back, not because we chose to attempt to strike a romantic mood, but because we had to eat by candlelight to see our food.  To me, that REALLY was romantic.  Cliff caught the change of mood immediately and turned off the incandescent lights that had just flickered on, and we continued almost seamlessly.

I don't consider myself a romantic, mushy kind of guy.  My wife says she would like me to be, but I doubt that really.  Last night's dinner was as romantic, in the fullest sense of the word, as it gets.  My wife did look fantastic, but it was so much more than that.  It was romantic because it could have turned completely sour if the attitudes in the room had been different, but they were not.  The ambiance was perfect, but not so much out of purposeful design, but because the guests and the restaurant staff went with the flow, improvised, laughed at the inconveniences, and were dissuaded from the idea that weather or power outages would keep us from enjoying the moment.  It was also romantic because Robin and I fully recognized the experience as yet another memorable Costa Rican evening that enfolded in a way not quite expected.  And OK, it was also romantic because we held hands for most of the night.  Some mush is allowed.

Fender-bender in Costa Rica

(Driving in San Jose can be hectic, but the dangers of driving in rural areas in Costa Rica are just as real.)


I stayed remarkably calm throughout the entire event; my wife was a bit less so.  When I saw that motorcyclist fly off his cycle onto the trunk of a parked car, my heart stopped for a minute.  I was turning right into a parking space without my turn signal on, he was passing me on the right, so there was plenty of blame to go around.  Fortunately, he was physically all right.  The damage was minimal, mostly lights on all vehicles concerned, but the official reporting took half a day.  We waited in the center of Uvita, a coastal Costa Rican town, until the police and an insurance guy from a town 90 minutes away arrived to fill out all the reports.  I was instructed by the transito that I could show up in court in Ciudad Cortez within eight days, but my car rental company told me that they will do that; that is why I signed all those papers when I got the Nissan 4x4 on day 1.

After all these years of driving in my favorite country, it finally happened.  Nice that it didn't occur during one of those times when I was driving over the Cerro de la Muerte in the dark, in the fog, with trucks passing on blind curves, with a thousand feet of drop off the side.  That would have ruined my year.  I guess this is why I have never been a fan of cars or of driving.  I learned at an early age how these machines can change your life forever.

When a fender-bender happens in the states, it is inconvenient, but it is really not that big of a deal.  If your vehicle is undrivable, we take it to the shop and we get around some other way for a while.  We take a cab or a bus or our neighbor who has a car delivers us where we need to go.  Heck, most of us have a second car anyway, so we use that one until the first one is repaired.  But in places like Costa Rica, it is a big deal to have your only mode of transportation down.  Bus transport in the capital is great, but not out here in the boonies.  Most ticos do not own a car or truck, some have a motocycle or a bike, and most walk nearly everywhere.  So this guy who richoched off my rental car will not be able to drive his moto until he gets the money to fix it properly.  Life gets instantly more difficult---to get to work, to get to market, to conduct business at the bank. (He will apparently receive insurance money, but it will take months.  I will have to pay for damages to the rental car up to the deductible amount.)

You could gauge how important this incident was in the daily life of a tico because of all the locals who stopped by to get the story.  The cyclist must have described his version of what happened a dozen times to friends and relatives while we waited for the authorities.  When gringos passed by, they barely noticed.  I didn't get to explain to anyone what happened.  There was an American eyewitness, however, who was drinking coffee only a few feet in front of where the accident occurred.  Terri Peterson gladly came to my rescue and volunteered to be a witness, if necessary.  Turns out she runs eco-tours from the southern part of the country, so this is my chance to give her a plug.  But from the crowd of ticos, you would have thought there were 2-3 bodies lying on the pavement instead of some pieces of broken glass and plastic.  Fortunately, the owner of the parked car was a guy named Eddie that I had just met 15 minutes before at the nearby gas station.  He had lived in the states for 16 years, so he served as my interpreter with authorities.  My Spanish is perfectly fine in a bar or restaurant, but explaining a car accident to the police is another matter.  All in all, I guess it made for an interesting morning for Uvitans.

In the mid-80s, we lived in a mountaintop village in Costa Rica with our three children for a year.  We had no car, so we walked everywhere.  It was really work to get food and to do errands.  And then, whatever you bought, you had to carry home. After a while, we bought a horse, and life got immensely easier.  I lost 25 pounds that year, and I was not overweight in the least when I got there.  Can you say emaciated?

So I feel badly that I caused, or was involved, in a disruption of the normal flow of events in this man's life.  The accident gave me something to write about; it only gave him a problem.  I wonder how often this is the case.  We tend to weigh our economic setbacks against our own standard of living, not against those for whom the event is much worse.  It even seems there are parallels here with the effects that U.S. international policies have on millions of less fortunate people in other countries.  But that is another blog.