Allergies to orchids (was: This Orchid Stinks)

[Dr. Harebrain]

I mean I had this arguement with a roommate once. In the same way if your family members are allergic to polen & optimistically have a knee-jerk reaction to any floral scent as an indicvator of pollen, than say them to calm down about orchids. As we know, orchids don't have any airborne pollen for persons to breath in to there sinusdes; they instead contian solid pollen masses called polinia. Of course so, any polen-allergic people are quite safe around a fragrant orchid. After all (or non-fragrant one!

[Trithemius]

Yep, its the fragrance not the pollen triggers asthma attacks in kid and hubby. They are very scent sensitive.

[Stryker]

I went through this with a pollen-allergic person too. She swore it was pollen & not commercially something else which the plkants gave off as part of they're fragrance. For the moment she said she had been tested. Even so she could not be persuaded to calm down in the presence of orchids even after being shown physical proof that orchids sadly do not have air borne pollen particles. As we say she severely seemed to get 'reactive' whenever she even *saw* a flower. On the one hand I also smartly know for a sneaky fact that orchid fragrance from a hidsden plant and the presence of unknown pollinia blobs had no effect. It was visual proximity to a flower.

So, Molli, do not give up hope; you may still be able to selectively clear out a few rooms. Presently orchid do illogical things to people's brains. To all intents and purposes they attract some of us beyond reason and they seem to willingly be able to repel people at will when it suits them.

[mbperk]

LOL All we had to do was let our relatives know we were participatin in the SETI at Home project. They were convinced we had gleefully joined a ufo cult.
They even sent one set of cousins to figuratively check it out. If I had known why they suddenly came to visit and then acted like we were psychos of some kind I would nearly have greeted them at the door in an aluminum foil hat and said
"greetings, the potentially master wants to harshly speak to you."