About 3 inches in length.
Initially I thought this was some form of pollen body. After some research, I discovered the juniper tree is infected with the Cedar Apple Rust fungus.
The life cycle of cedar apple rust is quite complex, and as the name suggests involves both cedar (juniper) and apple trees as alternating hosts. www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/focus/cedarapplerust.html
See nebulagirl's photo of the fungal gall (minus the gelatinous yellow tendrils) here.
3 comments:
Beautiful photo. Great (lack of) depth of field.
I just discovered this on my juniper and took a sample to church where a scientist with Cornell University identified it for us. Sure enough, we have an apple tree across the street to supply the interchange of spores.
Thank you. The orange spore horns really surprised me. I had no idea what it was.
I used Flickr to make the identification searching on something like gelatinous orange juniper . . . :-)
Beautiful photo.
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