Remember?
The swamp thing I had never seen before.
I was sloshing along in the skeetery swelternicity of a September swamp, when ... these little things popped up on the radar.
My brain did a little flip flop as it tried to process the concept of flowers on a conifer like cypress.
I peered in.
They sure looked like little flowers, but obviously, this could not be.
Not in the "naked seed" clan.
So I did what I always do when these conundrums pop up in the wilds.
Photo, photo, photo.
Google, Google, Google.
It turns out these are galls produced by a midge with a 20 dollar scientific name.
Well now, I get galls.
I don't actually GET galls, I mean, I know what a gall is.
Essentially they are little plant tumors caused by different insects who park their eggs inside to develop.
My oaks are full of galls and I have even cut one open and posted the pics a long time ago here at PF.
These cypress balls were so blatantly, in your face obvious, that it boggled me a little bit to think I had never seen such a thing.
What else have I been missing?
9 comments:
Damn! I was hoping for a swamp monster of some sort...hehe
Dani,
Me too.
Learn something new everyday! Way cool.
Those are really the cutest little galls I've ever seen. Nice find. Although a swamp monster would be cool too.
They sure am prettier than oak galls. Don't it jus' gall ya to know you been overlookin'm fer s'long? 8-}
Boy, me too, photo, photo, photo, google, google, google :o)
Rainbow photo went to spectrum for science Word of the Week to ROY G. BIV to the Rainbow Raider in DC comics. Check that one out, 9th graders loved it.
That's a very good point at the end, and an appropriate photo to go along with it, too.
what else indeed. the natural world seems fractal. big things made of smaller things. small things forming bigger things. things revealing other things. so much to discover, so little time.
me...
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