Mystery blobs

Any idea what this is?


Found all over some small silver birch trees, while we were rambling about the countryside with assorted small children recently.

They come in clusters, too:


My first thought was, ah - it's a gall. The leaves are of course obviously somewhat chewed. But when you pick them off they're rock hard - and they have hollow innards. And besides, birch gall looks like this, which is not at all the same thing.

I was a little sad to find that it wasn't the rather wonderfully named silk button spangle galls: they look like this:


(the pic is from the compellingly interesting Tree Blog which is following the lives of about 25 trees from seed up, and has an alarmingly comprehensive selection of disease-related pictures to show for it. It actually made me wonder how any tree actually makes it to maturity.)

So - any ideas? I'm still with the galls idea, but am intrigued to know what might have caused this and how. They're very pretty, but clearly not doing the tree any good at all.

Over to you?

A walk on the wild side

Thistle seedhead catching the sunshine (before the snows came)

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time wandering through countryside, usually with dog in tow, and it's hard to do that without appreciating just how remarkable wild plants and flowers are. They don't get so much as a smidgin of attention from us, yet they seed themselves, grow up bravely fighting off all manner of weeds (actually they often are weeds) and pests and make it to adulthood to produce a heart-stopping flower of their own. As a gardener it's all a bit humbling.

So since I often think they look at least as pretty as garden flowers I thought I'd give them their own spot in the limelight here, starting with a thistle I kind of wish I had in my garden as its seedheads were nicer (and much more sturdy) than most of mine have been this winter. But then the whole point of wildflowers is that they aren't in your garden, and you wouldn't want them to be if they were (I spend a lot of time and prickled fingers pulling thistles out of my garden, in fact). So I give you the thistle: in its own place and its own time, and long may it stay there so we can be stopped in our tracks while out dog-walking.