Editorial: Pine pollen the curse of spring

No, don't panic, the volcanos of the central plateau are not sparking into life ... as I overheard one person declare recently.

That dusty smear across the bonnet and the boot of the car, and everything else for that matter, is not sulphur. It is the most graphic, and for so many of the populace the most irritating, illustration that spring is in the air.

In the air, indeed.

For the clouds of pine pollen, from the great plantations of the west across the Bay, and driven to the east by the winds of the west, have begun making the lives of those charged with keeping cars in saleyards clean and shiny absolute misery.

Not to mention everyone else who has a habit of breathing in air.

It is the season of glugginess and the level of severity upon Bay folk can vary dramatically, given that other potent pollen producers are also puffing out the awful stuff.

Symptoms can be headaches, sore throats, excessive Nasal congestion and inflamed sinuses. Many people figure they've picked up a late-winter cold, but it's not so. It's more likely to be the result of major pine-tree planting during the past three decades.

Very much commercially sound I daresay, but I'm a sufferer, and on the truly pollen-packed days when I'm sneezing my own little clouds out I curse and shake a fist at anything made of Pinus radiata, and wish they would chainsaw the brutes down and replace them with vines, apple trees, maize and anything which doesn't coat your washing.

But it's fleeting and there are places of refuge. They are called chemist shops. The medical fraternity and pharmaceutical fraternities are well aware of the yellow menace. The sales of antihistamines traditionally go up between August and November, and the advice from doctors is to get yourself checked out.

While pine pollen alone is not high on the allergy-causing list, it does like to mate with grass pollen and the result can be a nose and throat-smacking one. Simply by virtue of the volumes of pine pollen drifting over, there will be inhalation problems.

It is now as much a part of Hawke's Bay's landscape as the deteriorating coastline - you play with nature and things happen.

Ah, but come November the air will have cleared. Then it's just the wild westerlies and having to knock on doors three houses down to get your tea towels and other airborne washing back.

Spring, the season of promise, growth and blossoming beauty, can actually be a bit of a Nasally, throaty, lungy pain.

Oh, roll on autumn, I say.