Suburban Wildlife Garden: Juniperus ashei

Monday, January 7, 2008

I'm Allergic to Austin

Well, not all of it. So far, I only seem to be annoyingly allergic to the Mountain cedar (Juniperus ashei) which populates my area of the Balcones Canyonland Preserve by the millions (billions?) and is pollinating enthusiastically this month.

Here are some cedars holding seige a few blocks from my house...

Being a Missouri farm girl I'd never heard of anything pollinating during January, but turns out mountain cedar is originally froma Northern Mexico. The Advocates at People Against Cedars kindly gave permission for me to use this scary photo of a cedar tree releasing pollen...[thank you!]

Now that's a lot of pollen!

People Against Cedars work hard to educate people about Mountain Cedars. Turns out Mountain cedars are bad neighbors. They are invasive water hogs, (one plant can drink 32 gallons of water a day!) and worst of all Mountain cedars cause a growing threat of fire as they spread. Mountain cedars are even illegal to buy, sell and plant in certain parts of the Southwest because of health and fire hazards. Sounds like it may be time to cull the little buggers. If I didn't think I'd expire participating, I'd get out there and start chopping.

In the video below it's not smoke you're seeing that's drifting through the air it's cedar pollen in an 11 second video by "WoedaB" ...

Achoo!

I did not realize I had allergies until we moved to Austin. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America voted Austin, Texas the 2nd allergy capital of the US. Now that's a distinction I could have lived without.

When I asked my doctor when allergy season was over in Austin she laughed rather too gleefully for my taste and handed over a big allergy sheet very much like the data sheet below from the Central Texas Allergy & Asthma Center.

Hmm...As you can see there is no real 'down-time' for the afflicted in Austin. But if you're bothered by Mountain Cedar you might not want to winter here. I pop antihistamines like Chiclets and take so many Skin-so-Soft baths I think my Avon lady is going to propose.