I love spring. It's my favorite season because here in Montana, spring seems to last for two weeks.

But the birds are already migrating back to their favorite trees and grasslands, it no longer gets dark at 4 p.m., and the sun rises before breakfast. It's awesome, especially when you think about the life we start to see renewed in the vegetation again.

My wife, Cory, however, thinks I'm crazy because I get so excited to see trees with leaves. I am pretty animated when the first tulips and daffodils bloom, and I'm always on the prowl this time of year to note the day when the leaves come out on our state plant, the bitterroot! Seeing is wonderful, but I particularly enjoy the fragrances, especially roses and lilacs. While both of these plants bring me joy when I smell them, Cory, along with a rather large population of people, disagrees with me because they suffer with something I don't: allergies.

I feel badly for this population segment. Actually, when I was younger, I wanted to have allergies. I had a friend with bad allergies and I thought he was so lucky. I made up an allergy for about a month -- sneezing and sniffling for no apparent reason-until my parents kindly told me to stop being ridiculous. Had I been able to contract an allergy, what would it have been and why?

For springtime allergy sufferers, pollen is the culprit. Unfortunately, unless you live in a bubble, you can't get away from it. We all breathe pollen into our lungs. Plants produce pollen to reproduce. In some plants -- such as trees, grasses and weeds -- pollen is designed to move via wind transport. Other specialized plants like sweet peas rely on insects to move pollen from plant to plant helping with the reproduction process. The plants that rely on wind transport not only release pollen into the air for poor unsuspecting noses, but they produce it at a much higher volume than the specialized plants. To help allergy sufferers fight this common springtime ailment, many weather Web sites post daily pollen forecasts.

So, what is it about pollen that can make a day miserable?

Our immune system helps us fight viruses and bacteria, but in an allergic reaction, our immune system responds to a false alarm. When someone who is allergic breathes in pollen, his or her immune system attacks with specific antibodies. These antibodies can be found in various types of cells. When they encounter the allergen, they come together like a puzzle. This signals the cell to release inflammatory chemicals -- such as histamines and prostaglandins -- that can trigger allergy symptoms.

Now that I know a little more about how allergies work, next time I see a rose, I'll tell Cory to go ahead, stop and smell the roses, because it's actually the grasses, trees, and weeds causing her misery. I hope you do the same!

Professor Science Kyle Hunter is science education specialist at Helena's ExplorationWorks museum. If you have an Everyday Science question for Professor Science at ExplorationWorks, and would like it answered e-mail professorscience@E

xplorationWorks.org.

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