{"id":223,"date":"2012-09-27T14:27:19","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T18:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/?p=223"},"modified":"2012-09-27T14:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T18:27:19","slug":"ragweed-food-of-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/2012\/09\/27\/ragweed-food-of-the-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"Ragweed = Food of the Gods?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Indianapolis Star reported last week that this is a terrible year for allergies.\u00a0 Adults who have never suffered symptoms are being even being affected.\u00a0 The severity of hay fever problems was attributed to the mild winter and summer drought.\u00a0 I was happy to see that the photo that accompanied the article was one of ragweed (Ambrosia <\/em>sp.), correctly identified.\u00a0 Often on TV, and once previously in The Star, photos of plants in hay fever stories show the seeds of dandelion or a related plant.\u00a0 I guess this is because pollen, the major trigger of hay fever, is too small to show easily.\u00a0 While we can all related to seeing dandelions seeds spread by the wind, they don\u2019t tend to end up in our noses.<\/p>\n

Wind pollinated plants cause hay fever.\u00a0 Ragweed is a classic.\u00a0 Its long spikes of flowers are<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ragweed in flower in all its glory.<\/p><\/div>\n

essentially made up of either all female reproductive parts (carpels) or male reproductive parts (stamens).\u00a0 These plants do not rely on insects to vector, or carry, pollen from flower to flower to fertilize seeds.\u00a0 Instead their strategy is to produce copious wind-blown pollen that must land by chance on the correct flower part to be able to fertilize an egg.\u00a0 This strategy is chancy, so much pollen is made to increase the odds.\u00a0 Wind pollinated species do not invest energy in making showy flowers to attract unneeded pollinators.\u00a0 Indeed, petals would get in the way of wind-blown pollen transport.\u00a0 This is why ragweed and other wind pollinated plants are often overlooked in flower; flowers are greenish and dull.\u00a0 Grasses, some that bloom in the spring and some in the fall, are another plant group that uses wind to spread pollen.\u00a0 So are hardwood trees that bloom in the spring.<\/p>\n

Giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida<\/em>) is a native species that can grow 10 feet or taller.\u00a0 Its most characteristic features are its three-parted leaves and spikes of flowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Giant ragweed leaf.<\/p><\/div>\n

Male flowers look like yellow clusters or packages of pollen close-up.\u00a0 The genus name Ambrosia<\/em> means \u201cfood of the Gods.\u201d No one is sure why.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Male ragweed flowers.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Indianapolis Star reported last week that this is a terrible year for allergies.\u00a0 Adults who have never suffered symptoms are being even being affected.\u00a0 The severity of hay fever problems was attributed to the mild winter and summer drought.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119732,119731],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ambrosia","tag-hay-fever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}