The Gall

Here's my new bae Andricus quercusstrobilanus, Mom. He's a fake pine cone that is in fact a gall, the space station of a gall wasp parasitical on oak trees. Fairly rare to see them so fresh and orange; usually they're seen and photographed in the dryish brown stage. I was just lucky, I guess. It was my moment. Their months are July and August and they seem to like wet, steamy weather. Is that more than you wanted to know, Mom?

Mom, did you ever imagine that your kid (nay, the fruit of your womb) would be curious about, like, strange growths like fungi, galls and slimes? Kind of be a geek about them? Wondering what the heck this planet has in this walk-in closet called reality? Remember spanking me with a hairbrush?

Beautiful Horrible

A new low: People throwing spaghetti from their cars into the roadside trees, I thought. But this showy jellylike ornament on a cedar branch, common after heavy spring rains, is Cedar-Apple Rust, not a fungus but a gall that grows only in the presence of both red cedar trees and trees in the apple family (including the hawthorn tree, bearer of Missouri's state flower). The same spherical gall can flower brilliant pumpkin-orange like this repeatedly during the spring, when rainy days alternate with dry. In a sinister and monstrous way it's pretty but not good news for the tree, and it's contagious.

A website explains: "Spring rains cause horn-like structures, called telia, to extrude from galls. When these horns absorb water, they become jelly-like and swollen. Between rains they dry to dark brown threads. The telial horns are comprised of thousands of two-celled spores called teliospores. Swelling and drying of telial horns may occur 8-10 times during the season. Each time, the horns push out further and expose more teliospores until the supply is exhausted."

I suppose it's just trying to make a living like everybody else.