Plan B

I decided to head out to a favorite path this afternoon. It has all the best elements for a walk; forest, meadow, water, and a bridge. Perfection! I recognized Zigzag goldenrod in the forest, Solidago flexicaulis for the scholarly, so named for its wandering stem.

Among the stumps and tree debris on the forest floor, I saw some bright orange fungus. After googling "bright orange fungus", I came up with an identification of Laetiporus sulphureus or sulphur shelf which is also commonly known as Chicken-of-the-Wood. It is usually attached to hardwood, possibly oak, in this case, and is edible. I would take this with a grain of salt, or not, as I would not eat this in case I am wrong. 

The path enters an open meadow as it heads towards the river. It is a good spot to see wildlife if you walk it earlier in the day. I did see where a beaver had chewed some fresh branches from a willow beside the path. He must have made several trips because a path was worn around the tree and a round passage was made in the deep grasses. I only saw a few butterflies but one of them was a monarch visiting the Joe Pye weed. 

My peaceful reverie was interrupted by a loud drone. I expected to see a swarm of bees or maybe a mosquito from the ice age fly past carrying a hapless chipmunk. Ok, a little fanciful. As it turned out my quiet walk turned into the local airshow, and the drone became several historic aircraft and a few jets. I decided to abort this particular mission and head home for Plan B.

I decided that  I would try to identify some of the unusual things that I have photographed lately. Turns out that the following were all examples of galls. A gall is a unique plant structure that acts as a habitat and a food source for whoever is making the gall. They are often gall wasps and are named according to where they have chosen to construct. The gall below was made by a Diploepsis rosae because it inhabits a field rose. The gall is called a moss gall, mossy rose gall or by the unlikely name of Robin's pincushion gall. Who is Robin?! The inside is a little catacomb of egg chambers and eventually the young really do eat themselves out of house and home. I thought this might be the origin of "you've got a lot of gall", but alas, no.

This oak branch has become the site of oak bullet galls, at least I think so. Oaks host many gall wasp home builders and it is specific to the type of oak and the part of the tree on which it builds. This is a cluster along the twig and the galls seem to be smooth. Later when the insect exits its little gall apartment, it will leave a small round hole and the gall will be dry, hard and hollow. Apparently the tannin found in oak galls was used to make iron gall ink from at least the time of the Romans, and documents written on papyrus remain clearly legible today. The recipe was recorded and is still being used by artists.

This strange structure was found growing on a wild grape vine. A search for weird growths on grapes, determined this to be a grape filbert gall, which is caused by a particular small fly or midge.  Curious to know why it is called filbert, I pressed on. It didn't say. So I looked up "filbert" and found that it is another name for hazelnut, possibly because the feast of St. Philbert falls during hazelnut harvest. So unless someone decided that this gall reminded them in some way of hazelnuts, this may remain a mystery.

Wander often, Wonder always.