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Pine and spruce pollen

Pine and spruce (Pinus sylvestris, Picea abies) is airborne here from may to june, peaking late May for spruce, the first half of June for pine. Allergenic potency: low. No established food cross-reaction.

This is reference information, not a diagnosis and not a treatment plan. A pollen calendar cannot tell you what you are allergic to, and no page can clear a food as safe for you — only the label on the packet in your hand and the clinician who knows your history can do that. Anything beyond mild, short-lived symptoms in the mouth or nose — swelling that affects breathing or swallowing, hives away from the mouth, wheeze, vomiting or faintness — is an emergency question, not a reading question.

● peak weeks · ○ usually airborne. Typical mainland window from the national aerobiology monitoring programmes of the region · checked 2026-09-06

Where it grows here

Scots pine and Norway spruce are the backbone of the northern forest and cover more ground here than anything else. When they flower, the amount of pollen released is on a different scale from any other plant on this list — visible as a yellow film on lakes, cars, windowsills and puddles for a week or two each year.

When it is in the air

Spruce goes first, usually in the last week of May, and pine follows through the first half of June. The visible pollen fall is dramatic and completely predictable, and it does not track anyone's symptoms particularly well.

What it feels like

Conifer pollen is a weak allergen. The grains are large, and pine grains carry two air bladders that make them larger still, so relatively little of it reaches the small airways. Most of what people feel during the yellow fortnight is mechanical irritation of the eyes and nose rather than an allergic response, and it settles quickly indoors.

What it cross-reacts with

Conifer pollen has no established food cross-reaction and no routinely tested major allergen. Pine nut allergy exists and can be severe, but it is a primary food allergy to the seed, unrelated to breathing pine pollen. The two share only a word.

Related pollens: other conifers.

Foods: no established cross-reaction. That is a useful negative — a food reaction in someone sensitised to pine and spruce is not explained by the pollen and deserves its own assessment.

Named allergen molecules: No major allergen established in routine diagnostics. These are the official WHO/IUIS names, and they are what a component-resolved blood test reports.

What actually helps

If June is genuinely bad for you, the calendar has a better candidate than the yellow dust: grass pollen starts in the same weeks and is one of the two strongest allergens of the northern year. Rinsing eyes and face after being outdoors handles conifer irritation; grass allergy needs actual treatment.

What gets misread

This is the most visible pollen of the year and therefore the most blamed. Visibility and allergenic strength are unrelated — the pollen that causes the most trouble in this region, birch and grass, is invisible, while the pollen everyone can see does comparatively little.

Sources: Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex II · Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 828/2014 (gluten claims) · WHO/IUIS Allergen Nomenclature · season windows from the national aerobiology monitoring programmes of Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway · cross-reaction patterns paraphrased from the allergy literature and EAACI material · checked 2026-09-06

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