Word: pollens
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Spring was suddenly in the air, a little later than usual, and trees were tardily emerging from their long winter dormancy, budding and flowering with vigor. Arboreal petals opened, exposing pollen-covered anthers to the breezes, which wafted pollen grains into the air, carrying some of them for many miles. By June, while the late-blooming trees were still in blossom, flowering grasses began contributing to the airborne assault, and many regions in the East began reporting record pollen counts...
...nature intended, the sheer number of pollen grains -- the botanical bearers of sperm -- ensured that at least some would reach and adhere to their natural goal: the stigma, a moist and sticky receptor of the female organ of the flower. That would start a fertilization process eventually resulting in seed and the propagation of the species. As a result of one of nature's oversights, however, many of the pollen grains reached another moist and sticky target first: a human eye or the mucous membranes of a nose or bronchial tube, where they set off a chain of events with...
...been hell," says Mari Cox, 37, a medical assistant in Kansas City, Kans. A wet spring and wind in the region have whipped up pollen counts, so debilitating Cox that she hasn't been gardening -- her hobby -- or even playing with her five kids. Instead she is lying low, taking antihistamines and decongestants. "I'm miserable," she says...
...Fire Island beach near New York City, weekenders are peacefully sunbathing when the wind suddenly rises, blanketing them with swirling clouds of pollen. Coughing, wheezing, their eyes tearing, some of the bathers beat a hasty retreat from the beach. "It was just like yellow smoke," says an awestruck city dweller...
What has improved is scientific understanding of the mysterious chain reaction that causes tiny pollen grains to make a human being miserable. Fresh insights into the process, combined with the new techniques of molecular biology and genetic engineering, offer hope that this plague will someday be brought under control...