allergic rhinitis<\/a>, or seasonal allergies. She said that instead of focusing only on avoiding the allergens, patients can find relief from mitigating the symptoms. Her advice: Look for a nasal steroid first; don\u2019t go to the pills right away.<\/p>\n\u201cA lot of people reach for oral antihistamines like Zyrtec and Allegra,\u201d Dr. Mollah said. \u201cIt\u2019s better to reach for Flonase [spray] because it\u2019s just more effective and actually reduces inflammation in the nose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Inflammation of the nose, eyes and throat are the most common symptoms. But if you feel it in the lungs, it could be considered allergy-induced asthma and should be diagnosed and treated by an allergist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSkin testing or a blood test to find out what you\u2019re allergic to is also a therapeutic step,\u201d Mollah added. \u201cThen we can give you the specific measures to avoid\u2026 and up the medicine as tolerated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mollah said that changing your environment can help as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people are inside, I recommend they close their windows during their flare season,\u201d Mollah said. \u201cThen if they\u2019re outdoors and they come back indoors, I recommend they change their clothes and shower to get all of their pollen off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mollah insisted that despite how it sometimes feels, Sacramento isn\u2019t special for its allergens. Everywhere in the country gets bombarded with pollen at some point in the spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven sometimes in the desert,\u201d Mollah said. \u201cPeople move to Arizona thinking there\u2019s no pollen, but then there\u2019s a ton of golf courses, so then there\u2019s a ton of grass. And then there\u2019s grass allergies. It\u2019s kind of hard to avoid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, Mollah asks patients to pay attention to symptoms and reach out when they start impacting their quality of life.<\/p>\n
New therapies are coming out of allergy and immunology clinical trials. The latest advance is in allergy tablets \u2014 pills that are made entirely of the allergen to help build immunity over time.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Tablets] actually replace allergy shots,\u201d Mollah noted. \u201cIt\u2019s something they can do at home daily, but the first dose they do in the clinic. It\u2019s pretty effective to do it a couple months before grass season.\u201d<\/p>\n
What to plant instead\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colene Rauh is a UC Master Gardener of Sacramento County and a volunteer with the Sacramento Valley chapter of the California Native Plant Society. She grows native plants and vegetables on her one acre of land and helps schools and local programs develop their own biodiverse gardens.<\/p>\n
Some of the same solutions to springtime allergies create the most biodiverse gardens. Rauh recommends finding the pretty flowers, because those will be the ones that rely on insects for pollination.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pretty flowers, the pretty shrubs, the things that we really enjoy, a good portion of them are insect pollinated, and therefore don\u2019t really affect allergies,\u201d Rauh said.<\/p>\n
Bolte recommends fruit trees like apple, plum and pomegranate as a good place to start. As for pomegranates, \u201cnot only is it an attractive tree, but it\u2019s a heat- and drought-tolerant tree, so if you want a low-water tree that maybe won\u2019t affect your allergies as much, that could be a good option.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rauh lists out some of the plants she gives schools to help start their own biodiverse gardens, starting with California fuschia, manzanita and hummingbird sage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSticky monkey flower, Indian paintbrush, snowberry bush,\u201d Rauh continued. \u201cDon\u2019t ask me [for] my favorite.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whatever one\u2019s preference, Rauh recommends always going with native species.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPlant local natives to support migrating birds, and butterflies, and insects, and other pollinators,\u201d Rauh said. \u201cWe\u2019ve isolated our natural areas to the extent that if there is either a natural or a human made disaster in one area, the next area is often too far for a pollinator to reach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Why we need some of our worst springtime allergens<\/p>\n
Oaks are uniquely allergenic because of their reproductive strategy, but Bolte said they\u2019re extremely important to the natural habitat. Rauh calls them keystone species: \u201cIf you take the oak trees out of an ecosystem, that ecosystem will likely fail.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One thing oak trees do is host butterfly larvae. \u201cNinety percent of terrestrial songbirds rear their young on insect larvae,\u201d Bolte said. \u201cSo if you want the birds, you\u2019ve got to have food for the butterflies, and oaks are a really good food source.\u201d<\/p>\n
While peak flowering is happening now, they shouldn\u2019t be a bother for much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Oaks] do have a defined bloom period,\u201d Bolte said. \u201cThey have one flowering season in the spring. Then they just leaf out and provide beautiful shade for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not over yet\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_5323-1024x768.jpeg.webp.webp\")
GATEways horticulturist Kitty Bolte shows a young Monterey pinecone. Conifers will start producing pollen in late spring. (Emilie DeFazio-Reilly)<\/p>\n
Mollah said her patients will react to grasses into the late spring and early summer, with even more to look forward to in the fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWeeds are more late summer and fall, Mollah said. \u201cBasically, pollen is active in whatever form it may be from spring to the end of fall.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for what\u2019s to come, Bolte warned that while oaks and grasses are here now, later in the spring, anyone with a conifer tree allergy could start to feel the burn. Evergreen needles like pines, cedars and firs aren\u2019t as common in our region, but their pollen is still present, especially when they\u2019re planted as industrial landscaping and in local parks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like any hardy plant, they have their own unique reproductive strategy that is worth its own story.<\/p>\n
\u201cConifers actually don\u2019t even have flowers,\u201d Bolte says. \u201cThey just produce pollen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emilie DeFazio-Reilly\u00a0is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: Oak trees and field grasses, both flowering right now, are common causes of springtime allergies.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7999,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-225242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-highlight","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_5317-1024x768.jpeg.webp.webp\")
Oak trees reproduce via pollen that spread through the air. Green buds in the spring turn into acorns later in the year. (Emilie DeFazio-Reilly)<\/p>\n