Investigation Of Hay Fever Carried Out By Botanists

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 11, 13 July 1949, Page 7

Investigation Of Hay Fever Carried Out By Botanists

Many people in the Bay of Plenty are prone to catch hay fever during the summer months. Some mystery surrounds the sickness and medical investigations on the incidence of the fever, at present be--ing carried out in New Zealand, are very closely associated with the botanists study of those plants from which pollen is scattered by the wind.

Valuable data on hay fever plants and their flowerings are collected by scientists of the Pollen Section, Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and are made available, together with samples of pollens, for the medical investigations and clinical tests that are now being made on hay fever.

The botanists believe that the hay fever season may be considered in three overlapping phases: a treepollen phase, a grass-pollen phase, and a herb-pollen (weed) phase. Recent investigations have shown that in most areas the grass-pollen phase is- by far the most serious, and that the pollen is borne from grasses on roadsides, waste places, coastal areas, and hill sides. Occurs in Summer The extensive “showers” of pollen generally occur, of course, in the summer months, but it has been found that pollen of hay. fever potentialities from trees and weeds are in existence from July onwards.

A plant must be abundant in a district to be an important general cause of hay fever, but on the other hand a single hay fever plant might affect a patient sensitive to that pollen. So the botanist records all hay fever plants in a district. He also records all other wind-pollin-ated plants, with special reference if they are closely related to the species known to cause hay fever, in the data suplied for the clinica] investigations.

For instance the Taupata (Coprosma repens), a native much used as a hedge plant—especially in seaside areas—has been shown by clinical test to be capable of causing hay fever. It sheds over a long season, in Wellington beginning in September and lasting till midsummer, and the pollen is caught regularly on air slides. The specie was recently reported to cause hay fever in California, where it is an introduced plant.