Into Every Life...

They say into every life, a little rain must fall.  Lately, we could use more than a little rain -- it's been very dry even while just north of us, WI and MN have gotten lots of storms and flooding.  Yesterday afternoon (just in time for the farmers' market to be cancelled), we got much needed rain in the form of some pretty heavy storms and some lasting light rain as well.  This morning, we got another little burst... I got caught out in it, totally unprepared, and had a soaking we walk.  But when you get caught in the rain, you get to see the rainbows!

With rain, we also got the "blooming" of the cedar apple rust galls.  

These look like alien life forms coming down to colonize earth via cedar/juniper trees, but are actually a fascinating manifestation of a disease that has a 2-host life cycle, alternating between these evergreens and crabapples, hawthornes, and other members of the rose family.  The galls on the cedar trees, taking up to 2 years to develop, look like hard, lumpy, brown golf balls until spring rains allow the orange telial howns to swell up.  They look like some sort of tentacled marine creature mysteriously misplaced in a branch a thousand miles from the ocean!  These release spores, then die... but the disease lives on as the spores find their crabapple (etc.) host.  On those leaves, they manifest as a yellow-orange spots.  Eventually, these, too will release spores that... you guessed it... infect the cedar trees!  And the cycle continues.  It's the circle of life... and it moves us all..

The Galling Occurrence of a Fun Guy

Spring rains have brought on the "blooming" of the cedar-apple rust galls.  I know I've previously described this fascinating disease, but since it is... well... fascinating, it bears repeating.  This gelatinous ball of orange horns adorning cedar branches -- and they are ALL OVER right now, as though they have been decorated for Christmas by a strange alien -- is one part of the life cycle of a fungus that affects both the cedars and apple trees.  Its lifecycle requires two hosts living in proximity (and by proximity, I mean within the few-mile radius of each other that spored can blow in the wind).

These orange protrusions, called telia, emerge from tight brown galls on cedar trees during spring rains.  Over the course of April and May(ish), they can swell and dry up many times as wet weather comes through.  When they do, the horns emit spores into the air.  These blow in the wind until they find their other host -- an apple or crabapple tree at the vulnerable point in their own lifecycle when they're flowering and leaves are new.  (Also hawthorns and quinces can be infected).  Soon, splotches of discoloration appear on the leaves, yellow, turning orange/rusty, then black as well.  Crabapples are very common around here, and hawthorns as well.  I've been looking for symptoms on them, but, notably, haven't found any.  While the infection spreads within hours, it takes about a week, I think, for the spots to appear, so I'll keep looking.  At any rate... In late summer, these rusty splotches release spores, which, born upon the winds, find... you guessed it!  Cedar trees!

When spores land on cedar trees, it takes much longer for symptoms to develop than it does on the apple.  At first it's a hard, small, brown gall.  In fact, the fungus overwinters this way.  The telia don't actually swell to their gelatinous, alien-like arms until their second year of cedar infection!  (And after that, they're done.)  Most of the time, what you'll see on cedars is just brown, woody protuberances that pretty well blend in.  Upon inspection, they do have little pock-like marks that are where the individual telia will come out.  

The cedar-apple rust fungus can be pretty devastating for apple crops, so it's generally viewed as a negative, but... come on, those crazy things are pretty cool looking, right? 

Another notable spring development -- oak trees (bur oak shown here) have tiny, translucent leaves... perfect, 1-inch miniature versions of their future selves...

It's Galling! and More

Hackberry "nipplegall" on the underside of a leaf. 

I know many people consider them ugly, especially given their prevalence on an infected tree... but I really like Hackberry Galls.  This time of year, just before the adult insects emerge from the galls sometime in September, there are these tiny yellow insects inside.  They're not really viable yet but they're big enough to walk around, and they're kind of cute.  (Yes, I recognize that I've essentially killed the one pictured here to photograph it, but they seem like a pretty renewable resource, so to speak.)   

These insects have a fascinating life cycle (similar to many gall-creating critters).  When they come out in a month or so as adults, they will still be small, less than 1/4 inch long.  They look like mini versions of their close relatives, cicadas and leaf hoppers.  They will seek a relatively protected place to overwinter, such as inside cracks in bark, where they will hibernate. In the spring, they will awaken and lay their eggs on the underside of the new leaves of a hackberry tree.  The baby bug causes the tree to start growing around it -- I believe because of an enzyme they secrete when they eat.  The result is a gall, a growth made of plant material that houses the little insect.  In this protected environment, the insects spend the summer sucking on sap until they are full grown and ready to come out and start this process over.  The hackberry trees aren't harmed by the galls, other than in the aesthetic sense.  (I don't think the trees actually care how they look).  

I bit open the gall to study this fellow who was living inside!

Other updates:

My first mistflowers bloomed yesterday; most aren't in flower yet. 

Primroses -- peak bloom.

The American hazels started turning orange just within the last day or two...

White turtlehead blooming. 

Rain Brings Rust

The rain yesterday and today have caused the telial horns of the cedar apple rust galls to start swelling. They're not quite as gelatinous and alien-like as I've seen them in the past, but spring is young!

Though this disease is bad for both its hosts -- cedars and apples -- I think those things are cool looking, and I appreciate the complex life cycle involving two host plants. 

It's Just Galling!

This is one of my favorite periodic occurrences because it is just so strange. The cedar trees which, for most of the year have unremarkable brown growths on their branches, suddenly look as though they're carrying bright orange, slimy pompoms. And right now, they look like their game got rained out, because the recent rain has bogged down the usual gelatinous koosh-ball appearance of them. They are cedar-apple rust galls, but these galls are a totally different animal than the goldenrod and oak galls about which I wrote in the fall. Actually, these galls aren't an animal at all. But they are still called a gall because they, like the insect galls, cause the plant itself to form growths of its own tissue. Technically, cedar-apple rust galls are a pest and bad, but I think they are fascinating. This orange phenophase is when the rust is sending out spores into the wind... where they land on an apple (or similar) tree and infect it. On these hosts, they cause bright orange leaf spots, and eventually, later in summer, they also bear spores, which in turn land on cedar trees and cause their branch growths. Quite a life cycle!

Also just starting to bloom:
cream indigo, and
bladder campion.

In sad (for Naomi) news... some of my carefully cultivated Jewelweeds have bitten the dust. This is through no fault of their own, or nature, or me... I have these neighbor kids. They are nice, curious, and sometimes mischievous children. They play outside a lot (of which I approve). They play in my yard more often than I'd approve of, especially on the day when one of them ate a poisonous jack in the pulpit berry because it "looked like red corn"... but that's another story for another day. Anyhow, we've had many chats about not stepping on plants. Well, yesterday, the area between our two houses was a lake from all the water, and on my side of the lake is where the jewelweeds grow among the daylilies. They were playing in the lake with boats or somesuch and needed to go on my side. The daylilies are quite large, the jewelweeds still small spindly things... so they very carefully stepped around all the daylilies. They were actually so proud of themselves they called me over. "Look, Ms. Naomi, we didn't step on any of the plants!" Well, OK... but these little ones were plants, too and you stepped all over them! I did show them; we'll see if it still happens again. Anyhow, I hope the remaining ones will spread a lot of seeds again, and eventually... those kids will grow up.

All Out of Gall Puns

(Maybe I could start spelling it Gaul and making France puns? But it's not that important.) Anyhow...

I really didn't think I'd be able to find the insect inside these woolly oak galls that grow on the underside of the leaves. They are, after all, quite small, and consist mostly of fuzz. Beneath the fuzz is a hard kernel about the size of a sesame seed... and I managed to cut into it and find the larva inside (it's small and whitish, see it?). I should have been a surgeon.

These galls turn into wasps, I believe.

And speaking of oak trees, why are they so awesome? Among other things, check out these branches. They're twisty, gnarled, craggy, crooked, knotted, like the bony, arthritic fingers of a crippled old woman. I mean, look at those shapes!

The Gall of that Fly.

Goldenrod galls are probably not the most common around here, but due to their size and relative common-ness, they are definitely the most "famous," and when I say "gall," this is what students think of. The sketch above shows what they look like this time of year -- I love that the leaves (now just little nubs where leaves used to be) continue to grow out of the stem where the gall is... These galls are housing flies, which spend nearly a full year inside the goldenrod stem, if they are not interrupted by a mean teacher with a pocketknife. The adult flies, with a lifespan of less than a month, mate in the warm months of the year. They lay eggs inside of the goldenrod stem, and the larvae begin eating the stem immediately upon hatching (10 days later). Their saliva contains an enzyme that causes the plant to the protective gall. The plant functions around it, and the insect is completely protected. As it eats, it makes more space to grow and puts down more saliva, causing more stem swelling. As winter approaches, the gall flies dig a tunnel almost to the edge. In the picture below, you can see the the larva in the very middle, and the tunnel it has made going up between 1 and 2 o'clock. But it won't finish eating its way out until the spring... over the winter, it will stay in its protective plant case and produce some anti-freezing stuff. When spring arrives, it will pupate and emerge through a hole in the gall.
ps -- never rained yesterday, now they're saying today...

A Funny Thing Happened...

So this week, some of my classes will be looking at galls. I actually started with one class on Friday, and it was pretty neat. We found them, cut them open (which, I know, is committing insecticide, but we just cut open a very small percentage of them) and saw what was inside. Some galls are empty at this time of the year, but others have critters that overwinter in there, and we made some very cool discoveries. Expect some more gall postings this week, assuming I have similar findings with other classes.

Well, I had this oak leaf in my office. I picked it up a few weeks ago because of the shape and the veins, I just liked it and thought I might sketch it at a later time -- never happened. But the leaf happened to have a gall on it. On Friday after my class, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to have a "sample gall," so kids would know what to look for besides just the goldenrod galls, with which they are familiar. I put the oak leaf on my desk so I would remember to bring it to class.

This morning, when I arrived, I noticed right away that the gall had become less round, had flattened a bit. I inspected it, and found that the gall itself had a hole in it -- there was not one when I left on Friday, of this I am certain. And there was a tiny spider near the hole. (Either it emerged from the gall... or it ate whatever did and decided that the gall was good hunting grounds.) There are about 800 types of galls that live on oak trees... 800! Just on oak trees!!!... so it's entirely possible that one of those 800 types is a spider and does come out around now.

See it right there, above the gall in the photo? The actual size of that gall is about 3-4 mm. So I thought that was pretty cool; the gall "hatched" right at my desk. I put the spider and gall in a bug box to show my class today, but then I will release it and let it take its chances in the wild, so as to keep the arachnacide(?) to a minimum.

UPDATE: 2:42 pm. That spider has been safely released. I cut open that type of gall and discovered that the spider did, indeed, come from inside that gall. Cool.

A Galling Situation

There are hundreds of varieties of oak galls, and this is one of the coolest I've found. It looks like something alien to earth, with magenta tentacles coming from a yellow orb. (A gall, in case you're not as nature nerdy as I, is a growth on the plant that contains an insect larva or a mite. Most of them have little wasps or flies. In most cases, the insect secretes a substance that causes the plant tissue to grow abnormally and then the insect can develop inside the protective plant tissue. Oaks and goldenrods seem to be common hosts to galls. Also maples and ashes, now that you mention it.)

This seems to be how they start, small and tentacle-less.
This is an older one; they got almost half an inch long and turned brown, like little hedgehogs.

Here are some of the other oak galls I found today. Unfortunately, I only had my camera for part of the day, so I missed some of the varieties I found.

Tomorrow? Some scraps of honesty, I promise.