American Lady on Goldenrod

In mid summer and throughout fall, if your eyes start to water and itch and you can’t stop sneezing, you look around for something to blame.  You see fields of bright clusters of tiny yellow flowers belonging to various species of goldenrods, and you think, “Aha!  They must be the culprits!”

If that’s what you think, you would be wrong.

The perpetrator is something far more subtle, something that you could walk right past without really noticing, something with very inconspicuous, greenish flowering parts.  Continue reading →