"Cedar Fever" another Proud Texas Tradition

Surely the makers of Kimberly-Clark must delight in this season.  Thousands of boxes of Kleenex will be sold to we poor sods who will spend 50% of our day blowing our nose and itching our eyes.  The season of “Cedar Fever” is upon us.  Last year we moved here in the midst of it, and while many were suffering around me, I was thankful that my Yankee constitution would not be bothered by the Ash Juniper that makes up half of the trees in my yard. 

Well, clearly, I counted that blessing too soon.  I don’t know if that is typical, that a newly moved body is too behind the curve to react the first year to allergens, but this year, my nose and sinuses are on top of things and from the moment my plane touched down from Maine, I started sneezing and didn’t stop for at least three days.  “Cedar Fever” has claimed another victim.

Now, Cedar fever is a misnomer in two ways.  First, the tree is really an Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei) and although innocent, newly-moved, moi comes down on the side of this tree being good as wildlife cover and holding the soil in place, most native Texans get a murderous look in their eye when you mention them and recommend you cut the whole lot down immediately.  Their reasons being they “take up a lot of water”, but you know, I beg to differ.  Like all junipers they have the small scaly “leaf” adapted for water retention and they are NOT huge water users but are well-adapted, drought resistant trees.  Birds and mammals alike love the berries of this juniper, and the bark that is so easily stripped is used as nesting material for many birds.  It turns out the jewel of the Hill country birds, the endangered Golden Cheeked Warbler, insists on using old stands of Ashe Juniper to nest in, no other tree species will do.  So without these junipers, the bird will lose their tenuous hold on life.

 

In keeping with everything is bigger, grander, etc in TX the amount of pollen the male trees put out from Dec- Feb is stunning.  The amount considered “heavy” is 500 grams per square inch and I read that last year at this time the trees were producing 14,680 grams!  They expected the same high yield this year, so yikes, no wonder I can’t stop sneezing!  It seems the key to its creating such an explosive stir in us is that the biochemical structure of the junipers pollen protective coat has properties that make it unusually noxious.  File under “everything bigger or more dramatic in TX”! 

On the Cape, I was surrounded by Eastern Red Cedar, (Juniperus virginiana) and Common Juniper, (juniperus communis); the latter one produces the berry that is used in the making of gin.  I read one article that said if only you could make gin from the TX juniper you could drown your sorrows over your allergies.  No such luck though.  But you can make some of the sturdiest fence posts and with pastureland fenced for miles and miles here; you would think that would win some fans.

 

 Well, sniffle, sneeze and blow on; my cedars are full of White Winged doves, Black Crested Titmice, Golden-fronted Woodpeckers and soon, if my memory of last winter holds true, Cedar waxwings will come through and turn my trees into holding places for those stunning, Egyptian-drawing birds, with their black eyeliner and tidy crest.  I’ll take my Vit. C and use my nasal rinse and remain a supporter of this maligned tree.  At least, that’s my optimistic plan, but then I am only in the first weeks of this, check back at Valentines Day and see if I am still singing it’s praises!