Today I am trying to gear up for our summer unit on plant biology. It is the last of our three part biology study - we studied animal biology two summers ago and human biology last summer.

I have to admit to really dreading this last subject area. I have a black thumb and most of the kids in the family have allergies. None of us are very outdoorsy. We tend to read, do computer stuff, and work on art projects. But, today I worked at drumming up some personal enthusiasm.

One area of great promise to focus our studies on popped up in response to my dilemma of how to teach about plants when the kids are so allergic to pollens. Just on a impulse I thought I would see if there were any such thing as a hypo-allergenic plant. It turned into a delightful 4-hour internet rabbit trail. Yes, there are low allegen plants. A fellow named Ogren has devoted several years of research to developing a pollen scale that helps horticulturalists rank the allergen properties of plants. His website is here.

After getting an initial feel for Ogden's OPALS index (wind pollinated plants are high allergen plants and insect/bird pollinated plants are low allergen plants), I delved into finding out about the plants we already had established in the yard.

I was delighted to discover that we have a very low allergen grass - St. Augustine. We also are trying to get English Ivy started as a ground cover under the trees because the St. Augustine is having a hard time growing there. I also hope to trelis the ivy to hide the wall air conditioner that sticks out like a sore thumb on the front of the house. The bulb flowering plants that I have out front are low allergen - day lillies, spider lillies, and iris.

Most of the trees, however, are allergen nightmares. LOL. We have several oaks, two pecans, a sycamore, a sweetgum, and privet so plentiful it grows like a weed everywhere. Every one of these is a high allergen tree. Fortunately we do have a few low allergen ones too - fig, plum, apple, crape myrtle, and peach. Pine is listed on the low allergen list which is a surprise to me. I hope that is right considering that we have about 300 in the yard that we planted a few years ago. If I am understanding it correctly, the main pollen time for trees is in the spring. After that tree polination is finished and the other green stuff takes over.

I want the kids to raise some garden plants this year and we have already started them using a greenhouse kit. The tomato seedlings have already begun to sprout. We also have bell peppers, a few beans, several spice/herb seeds beginning to germinate. Oh, and onions too. I couldn't find OPALS ratings for garden vegetables. Just guessing from the fact that most of them are insect pollinated though, they should be great.

I think that low-allergen plants will make for a wonderful research theme this summer. We certainly will not be digging up or cutting down established plants, but new plant selections and neighborhood education projects would definitely have some study value.