Plant Sex & Global Warming - How They Are Connected and the Utter Destruction of Your Sinuses

PICTURE THIS: You are you. It is a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining, the last bits of snow are melting, children are playing outside, the birds are chirping, and the bees are buzzing. The world? It’s still technically the same with its many issues and overabundance of Karens, but spring still feels like a brand new chapter, a new era filled with new opportunities, new love, and new hope… and then there’s you. Rolled up on the couch like an armadillo nestled under a blanket.

You are probably binging WandaVision while dealing with a runny nose, scratchy throat, and a very vexatious perpetual wheeze; you’ve got hay fever, friend, and nobody would blame you for absolutely despising pollen.

A visual representation of what you like like in that moment, despite the redness, you look nice ngl | cottonbro

“Oh yes… pollen. That stuff sucks!” you think to yourself while reading this article you randomly stumbled upon through a social media ad (oh yeah! Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter! #shamelessplug). “One walk outside, and I feel like death the rest of the day! Heck, even longer than that! What even is that pollen stuff? Why is it important? And what does it have to do with global warming, my sinuses, and... plant sex?

Well, let's start with the very last question. I'll say, in the simplest of terms, if plants didn't have sex, we'd all die. On the other hand, if plant sex happened too much, we'd get far worse allergies than we normally do, and eventually, more people would die.

But before we begin that discussion, we must have this discussion--how plants have sex.

Let's get botanical! Let's learn about plant sex!

All about plant sex

A sex-ed class that will probably, let's be honest,

be far more informative than the one you had in Junior High

Pollen under an electron microscope | Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility

As I’m sure you know, in the vast majority of the animal kingdom, sexual activity between a male and female animal of the same species leads to a sperm cell from the male fertilizing an egg cell from the female. Once the egg cell is fertilized, an offspring develops. Plants of all kinds, being stationary creatures, cannot perform such sexual activity and thus need to find other ways to reproduce, which is where pollen comes in as the botanical version of the sperm cell. Pollen grains are tiny and only made up of a few cells. While they are extremely small, scientists can figure out what kind of plant produced a specific pollen grain based on the identifiers, such as granules and spines, covering the outer wall.

Angiosperms (left) gymnosperms (right) | Britannica

There are two different kinds of plants that produce pollen: angiosperms, plants that flower and create pollen in the flowers’ anthers, and gymnosperms, plants that have cone-like structures where pollen is created. Without pollen, plants would be unable to produce fruits and seeds, which are essential to ensuring the survival of a plant species and providing other species with food. Some plants can pollinate themselves by releasing pollen from one of its flowers to another of its flower’s female reproductive organ; the stigma. Other plants rely on natural elements like bees to carry the pollen to other plants of the same species--a process called cross-pollination. Still, other plants like trees (which are gymnosperms) rely on the wind to take the pollen to other trees, leading to pollen floating about in the air (1).

To answer your question, yes. Yes, you are.

This pollen is then perceived by your body as being an average piece of bacteria that needs to vacate the premises immediately, which is why you cough and sneeze so much; it’s your body's natural way of getting things out (5).

how global warming leads to more

pollen & the effects of more pollen

The earth currently has an estimated 409.8 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air. While that may seem like a lot off the bat, the number truly becomes overwhelming when one learns that that count is higher than at any other point in 800,000 years. This is of course the result of the manmade crisis, global warming—the exponential warming of the earth caused by burning fossil fuels which release CO2 into the atmosphere (2).

A simplified illustration of photosynthesis | Science Sparks

CO2 is a natural gas added to the atmosphere by dead and decaying orgasms. In fact, it is one of the basic building blocks of plant life as it is used in photosynthesis, a chemical reaction that plants perform in order to make energy and food for themselves (3). The more CO2 that is in the atmosphere, the more plants will have to perform photosynthesis. The more photosynthesis plants do, the more pollen they will need (4). The more pollen they need? You guessed it—pollen distribution will continue to increase, leading to more hay fever and even worse symptoms (6).

Harvard University researchers found that since 1990, the amount of pollen in the air has increased by 21%. They also found that the pollen season has increased by an average of 20 days and have connected half of the lengthening seasons to manmade climate change. “I think this is a smoking gun of the health risk from climate change that is probably clearer than any other,” states Aaron Bernstein, a Harvard interim director, “And yet it’s just one signal among many that come from the warming of the planet.” (7).

While an increase in allergies may not seem like such a big issue at first glance… I mean, it really is just a bad cough/headache/sneeze/body ache/runny nose fest that people have to deal with seasonally and, especially nowadays just to be safe, stay home from and lose money over (yes, that was all sarcasm). Even with allergy medications available, some people just have it so much harder than others during hay fever season.

For example, if one has asthma and is trying to enjoy the outdoor world while breathing in all that pollen at the same time, it can lead to a very bad reaction. Studies show that increases in pollen lead to more respiratory and cardiovascular deaths—deaths that will only increase into the future. Other studies have shown that on days with high pollen counts, the chance of having a heart attack increases by 5%. Although more research is needed, these studies have also led to the hypothesis that a higher pollen count can lead to the thickening of artery walls, the thickening, of course, being a gateway into developing heart disease (8).

“Okay so… that all seems scary, but the numbers and percentages given are so small. Is it really that big of a deal?” To that I say, you are correct. The percentages aren’t the biggest—but like shaving 20% of the hair atop your scalp an hour before work just to have your electric razor break or drinking a glass of water just to find out that 5% of it was gasoline, they can produce significant issues for many individuals. The numbers may be looking small, but they are small numbers that are the only beginning of a bad situation. The questions of “Where am I going to get a new razor before work?” and “What the heck do I do now that I just drank freakin’ gasoline?” are similar to the questions of what will happen if carbon dioxide immersions continue at the rate they are today.

Except, in the most fortunate of unfortunate circumstances, we know the answer.

More sickness and death will be caused by global warming because global warming will lead to more CO2, leading to more plant sex leading to more pollen in the air.

And we are barely getting started.

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Thank you for reading about plant sex!

-Vinny Demme