Flowers are a beautiful way to brighten a garden and a classic symbol of love and affection. Some flowers are highly allergenic, so you may have to experiment a little to find the flowers that don’t irritate your allergies, but once you do you will be able to enjoy the beauty and fresh smell of flowers in your home without sneezing and suffering from watery, itchy eyes and without allergy pills.
The flowers that contain the highest levels of pollen are those that are most likely to affect your allergies and should automatically be avoided. These high-pollen flowers would include lilies, mums, daisies and any tree flowers such as apple or cherry blossoms.
There are, however, some hybrid mums and daisies that have been bred to grow with a double blossom and don’t have the high pollen levels of their natural counterparts. You might find one of these hybrid flower types to be your best choice for not affecting your allergies.
Other good choices in flowers for allergy sufferers include roses and orchids. The pollen that is created by roses is much larger in size which means it is less likely to become airborne and be breathed in to affect allergies. It is no wonder that roses have been the gift of choice for many centuries! The orchid is relatively free of pollen and makes another good choice for allergy sufferers. It should be noted, however, that orchids may sometimes cause a skin rash for people who are allergic to it, but this can be avoided by wearing gloves when handling the flowers and/or having a non-allergic person remove the visible pollen from the stamen of the orchids before bringing them into your house.
How to choose a pollen-free varieties?
Try to keep pollen to a minimum. It is important to recognize male plants from female plants because one pollinates more than the other and will aggregate an allergy sufferer more. Gender of a plant makes a large difference to the pollen an individual will breathe when they are outside. During the flowering process, male plants create more pollen than the female plants.
Considered to be messier, female plants are better for being less pollen producing so therefore these are the types of trees, plants and shrubs people will want to plant in their yards. Male plants create more pollen spores throughout the year causing more allergy sufferers to seek medical help which in the end, costs money. It may be hard to tell which plants are male and which plants are female and help could be in the form of a specialist at the garden shop or nursery. Fruitless or seedless plants are typically male plants but the homeowner would not know this unless they ask.
Another trick to keeping the pollen from over running the yard is to pick tube or trumpet shaped flowers. The morning glory is one such flower that comes in a variety of colors like traditional white and several hybrids like pale yellow and lavender.
Chrysanthemums are a pollen-free variety that are available at garden shops for planting around a house to help keep pollen away from the homeowner and their family and they look good too. Other flowers that should go in the flower beds that are low-pollen are tulips, sunflowers, poppies, peonies, zinnias, clematis, crocus, nasturtiums, daffodils, impatiens or begonias.
For a yard with fewer flowers and more shrubs and trees, a low-pollen and free-pollen versions would make a yard look nice. They include crabapple, cherry, peach, pear, some maple, magnolia, juniper, plump, ash, redbud and the female version of the yew or maple. In addition, to limit pollen around the house, a homeowner could plant various red berry versions of holly.
Consider planting blooming flowering plants that attract butterflies rather than bees because butterflies carry less pollen than bees and other insects.
A Boxwood tree has an extremely allergenic flower, however, if it is pruned back yearly, it will keep it from flowering every year and a homeowner could plant this lovely tree in their yard without the worry of pollen invading their air.
Plant fungus or moulds and black spots from shrubs, flowering plants and trees replicate themselves through spores traveling through the air and is the main cause of allergies in people. To avoid this, ask a gardening expert at a plant store or nursery to help identify those vegetations that are prone to diseases and stay away from them. Because if a plant gets a disease, the spore’s means they travel by air so the air around the plant is toxic.
There is no reason for a person with allergies to live a flowerless life. Flowers can bring a lot of joy into a person’s life and surroundings and it is a shame not to be able to enjoy them. By making the right choice in low pollen flowers that are not known to cause allergy reactions, or even a hybrid that has been bred to reduce allergic reactions, you can enjoy all the benefits of having beautiful flowers in your home or being able to express your affections with flowers.