Article content

OTTAWA — There’s a biological war of the sexes raging in North America’s trees, and people with pollen allergies are the casualties.

A huge majority of the trees in many Canadian and U.S. cities are male.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or ‘Botanical sexism’ blamed for making life miserable for allergy sufferers Back to video

Female trees are messy. They are the ones whose flowers go on to produce nuts, seed pods, apples and other seed-carrying debris that people don’t like to sweep up off decks and patios or scoop out of clogged eavestroughs.

[np-related]

So growers have switched to supplying male trees, which don’t produce seeds.

Instead, the male trees produce pollen. And that aggravates allergies.

Tom Ogren, a horticulturalist from California, came to Ottawa as part of a cross-Canada tour sponsored by the makers of Reactine allergy medicine.

The average male tree produces an amount of pollen equal in weight to the female tree’s seeds, he said. But the pollen is mostly invisible.

Ogren doesn’t have allergies, but his wife of 45 years does. Years ago this gave him the idea of searching for the most pollen-free plants for his own home, and eventually for other people as well. He writes books on the subject.