I always find biology curious – which sounds like a daft thing for me to say as I am clearly a biologist and wouldn’t remain so if I didn’t find the subject intriguing. My recent real-world example that has piqued my interest, however, is my hayfever.
In biology patterns exist, but I’m also used to seeing (seemingly) random variations that give unexpected, unusual and often unrepeatable observations. This often occurs in either the simplest or the best understood systems. It is strange to me then that very repeatable patterns occur in (what seem to me to be) the more complicated systems.
When I was young I used to suffer from hayfever for long periods of the summer, but as I aged I began to suffer only in discrete periods. The first occurs around my birthday, every year, as it did this year. Even with the supposed changes to the climate affecting our flora, this period occurs reliably year in, year out. People may have commented that such and such a plant flowered very early this year, but the pollen that affects my nose and kicks into action the dribbles via my pterygopalatine ganglion is floating around at the usual period. My mum tells me it is apple tree blossom. So I took antihistamine tablets every day that worked a little less well than last year, and dribbled into a handkerchief for about two weeks. At the end of last week the pollen that was triggering my hayfever ceased to float around and my sneezes stopped. Just like that. No hanky required.
My next bout of hayfever is reliably due in late August. I wonder if my nose will warm me of the impending doom of climate change some years in the future.
