Sticky Flower

On Monday I was strolling along the little park across from my daughter's home with my baby grand-daughter, when I came across a weird new "creature". Sitting on the branches of the small cedar trees were these globs of orange, with sticky looking finger-like projections. Of course, I left my camera at home so I couldn't catch them in all of their glory ( I also missed a red winged blackbird and a meadowlark). I was intrigued as I had never seen anything so strange looking (almost frightening) that just appeared out of the blue from my otherwise familiar walk. I went home that evening and searched the Internet and found that the thing is called Apple Cedar Rust and it is a parasitic fungus that will damage surrounding crabapple trees while not necessarily harming the cedars. The spores of the fungus can travel up to two miles to attack the apple trees. On Tuesday I went back to the scene of the creepy fungus and already it had started to shrivel up in a gelatinous mush (otherwise known as a gall). Although disappointed that my pictures didn't do the creepy thing justice, I was happy to have learned something new about a natural phenomena. Something I will be able to teach my grand-daughter when she begins to question the world around her. 


Here is a link and a better photo of the Apple Cedar Galls: 

http://lancaster.unl.edu/hort/articles/2002/CedarAppleRust.shtml