LITTLE ROCK — Dear Otus,
My husband and I retired from Wisconsin in November, so this is our first spring here. No sooner did we welcome warmer weather than everything was covered with an inch of greenish yellow goo. The car was stuck in the driveway and there’s a squirrel that’s been stuck on the windshield for three hours.
Please tell me all this pollen isn’t normal. I dread what will happen once all this stuff runs off.
— Anita Allegra, Hot Springs Village
Dear Anita,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to congratulate you for escaping from the Yankee hinterlands.
Also, I assure you that while your household water might be slightly discolored for a few weeks, it’s perfectly safe to drink.
This has been a record year for early Arkansas pollen, and the official state palynologist predicts it will get worse before it gets better.
Pollen season usually begins in early April and the very worst is normally over by May 15. It was three weeks early this year.
The recent pollen onslaught of wind-pollinated trees is mostly pine (green) and oak (yellow and green). The combination of the two forms a sort of chartreuse patina on all surfaces and standing water. Drifts can be up to 18 inches deep.
That’s in a normal year.
The situation this spring was exacerbated by La Nina — an unusually mild winter and a faster than normal increase in the mean daily temperatures.
One day the high was a pleasant 62 degrees, then it was in the 80s for two straight weeks. That’ll cause those little tree buds to explode.
Concerned dendrologists then noted the arrival of the ominous, but cyclical, event known as “El Estornudo.”
El Estornudo is to blame for the “sliming” of the state, including the sticky goo that covers Hot Springs Village.
Most of this year’s slime is coming from the oak catkins. Those are the stringy green and yellow “flowers” hanging from the branches. A typical catkin is a couple of inches long, but this spring there have been reports of mutant catkins up to 6 inches.
Size matters among oak trees. The huge amount of pollen granules released means the excess is not readily absorbed into the ground.
As you may have noticed, during the rain this week giant green and yellow pollen rivers formed, leaving behind yellowish high-water marks.
After one such recent rain, the Arkansas River actually ran green from Russellville to the David D. Terry Lock & Dam downstream from Little Rock.
The pollen also works its way into the water systems of towns and cities and turns drinking water a lovely pale green — cucumber or celadon — for several weeks.
You should not be alarmed about drinking the water. Ingested pollen has little effect on the human body. Inhaled pollen, on the other hand, can be miserable.
And if you should notice that your clothes are coming out of the dryer with a yellowish overcast, don’t worry. The pollen stain is not permanent.
In Little Rock, the city water crews have been working overtime to skim the pollen off Lake Maumelle and at the water treatment plants. The pollen is then dried, placed in hopper trucks and carted to the Port of Little Rock for barge shipment to the Gulf Coast, which uses it for insulation.
Lemonade from lemons? Noted local potters Gerstly Borate and Kingman Spar have made garden gnomes using cone 10 colored slip with pollen instead of Cerdec Degussa inclusion pigment. The striking results are on sale at the Arkansas Arts Center gift shop.
One caution about the oak catkins. Never sweep them up into piles. Dried catkins still contain about 30 percent of the pollen grains they did on the tree.
One final warning. The tree pollen is just the first round. Grass pollen is next and many feel it’s worse.
Native Arkansans are used to the onslaught of ragweed, plantain, nettle, mugwort, fat hen, sheep piffle and frakken, but you never get used to the sicklepod, eclipta and hemp sesbania.
Until next time, Kalaka suggests a stiff post-emergence herbicide.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of
humorous fabrication
appears every Saturday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
HomeStyle, Pages 32 on 03/24/2012