The Debunker: Are Flowers Bad For Your Allergies?  by Ken
Jennings    Allergies are often at their worst in the
springtime, when big, beautiful flowers are conspicuously
blooming all over the place. As a result, they were long blamed
for causing all the sniffling and the sneezing. Hay fever was
even called “rose fever” during the Victorian era and afterward.
In his 2000 book Allergy-Free Gardening, horticulturist Tom
Ogren created OPALS, the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale, which ranks
plants’ sneeze-causing potential from 1 to 10. (Hollyhocks are a
2, for example, while the dreaded bottlebrush is a solid 9.)
Ogren’s results have codified what allergists have been saying
for years: the prettier a flower is, the less likely it is to
cause hay fever. Flowers with big, brightly colored blooms have
evolved that way to attract the birds and bees that pollinate
them, and biotically pollinated species tend to have larger,
less irritating pollen. What really gets up your nose are the
dust-like pollen grains of plants that