Country diary: The grass is gone – and so is the pollen count | Paul Evans
Ppurple and silver: the flowers of the solstice grass. This is the first year that the entire five hectares of Brogyntyn Park have been left uncut, and Oswestry has designated it as a wildflower meadow. The transformation is enchanting. The many buttercups, ox-eye daisies and few orchids have privileges, but the grasses are the liberated proletariat that has never before realized its full potential.
Common grass names have an earthy poetry: fescue, false oat, foxtail, mist, bent, brome, couch, cock’s-foot, timothy, rye, sweet spring, squich. For a few days it stops raining and it becomes a little warmer. When the sun shines, so does the pollen. VH, a red sign on the weather map, announces a very high pollen count (more than 150 grains per cubic meter of air). About half of people in Britain report this hay fever symptoms – allergic rhinitis. For millions it can mean itchy eyes, runny noses, sore throats and sneezing, but for some the reaction can be fatally severe. Dogs, cats and horses are also affected, as if sacrificing an immune system is a trade-off with domestication.
Climate change has altered flowering times and extended the pollination period, increasing human exposure to allergens in pollen; This is predicted to intensify. Pollen is an important link between the biosphere and the atmosphere. This gust of ghostly dust contains grains that resemble microscopic sci-fi sculptures, each containing two male gametes to fertilize an ovule. Only a fraction will do this and many will eventually become food for palynivores (pollen eaters) – some spiders and hoverflies eat pollen. When herbivores such as cattle, horses or rabbits consume it, their dung nourishes beetles and springtails in the soil; ants store pollen underground to become nutrients for networks of fungal mycelium.
Due to the decline in the number of herbivores – here in Brogyntyn, for example, dog waste in the grass prevents grazing – the enormous global surplus is released into the atmosphere, leading to an epidemic of hay fever. Pollen in peat deposits is a historical climate archive and crime scene forensic evidence. How much pollen is deposited in me when I follow a brown meadow butterfly, whose caterpillar feeds on these grasses? All this beauty of the pastoral summer solstice is nothing to sneeze at.