Witches'-brooms
Fantastical creatures and strange growing things inhabit the gardening book I have been editing. House crickets, gophers, anthracnose, aster yellows, flies that look like bees, grasses that form yards in some places and are treated like weeds in others. Caterpillars that live in webby tents, bugs that form spittle at the nodes of stems, insects that live underneath hard, impenetrable scales.
Especially intriguing is something called a witches'-broom. I've never before heard of this phenomenon, a dense growth of twigs in a tree, caused by a hormonal imbalance which itself is caused by disease, which may be the result of insect damage.
I've taken to looking for witches'-brooms. Out the windows of the bus, I scan trees, but see nothing extraordinary. It's late winter, and the trees are bare, so odd growths should be easy to spot. Some trees are naturally bushy -- no brooms there. I see an occasional bird's nest, but many of the ones that were visible when the leaves first fell last autumn have been blown away by stormy winter winds.
Then today, as I am out walking and the season's first budding cherry trees are forming a misty swirl of pink against the stark black branches and the soft gray sky, I find one. It's on a small tree in the parking strip on Northeast 28th Avenue. It's a witches'-broom for sure, and it's right at eye level, so that I can examine it easily. A dense, almost clawlike knot of twigs crowds on a branch.
It's the only such growth on the tree, which seems to have a normal shape, buds beginning to form on the branches. When I look up, I see a few pine cones silhouetted against the usual slate-gray sky of Portland in March.
Pine cones? In a deciduous tree? Maybe they fell from a neighboring tree. I look about for likely suspects. None. There's a stubby palm-like tree growing in the front yard of the house, adding a disconcertingly Caribbean note to the landscape. The porch of the house has some trailing potted plants and a brashly colored wreath, flowers so bright they are likely fake, hanging near the door.
Nothing fits. Not the witches'-broom, the pine cones, the palm tree, nor the out of place wreath that looks like it belongs on a powder-room wall. Some sort of enchantment is in progress on Northeast 28th Avenue. Change is in the air. Connectivity is scattered.
I walk on, and the spell closes behind me.
Fantastical creatures and strange growing things inhabit the gardening book I have been editing. House crickets, gophers, anthracnose, aster yellows, flies that look like bees, grasses that form yards in some places and are treated like weeds in others. Caterpillars that live in webby tents, bugs that form spittle at the nodes of stems, insects that live underneath hard, impenetrable scales.
Especially intriguing is something called a witches'-broom. I've never before heard of this phenomenon, a dense growth of twigs in a tree, caused by a hormonal imbalance which itself is caused by disease, which may be the result of insect damage.
I've taken to looking for witches'-brooms. Out the windows of the bus, I scan trees, but see nothing extraordinary. It's late winter, and the trees are bare, so odd growths should be easy to spot. Some trees are naturally bushy -- no brooms there. I see an occasional bird's nest, but many of the ones that were visible when the leaves first fell last autumn have been blown away by stormy winter winds.
Then today, as I am out walking and the season's first budding cherry trees are forming a misty swirl of pink against the stark black branches and the soft gray sky, I find one. It's on a small tree in the parking strip on Northeast 28th Avenue. It's a witches'-broom for sure, and it's right at eye level, so that I can examine it easily. A dense, almost clawlike knot of twigs crowds on a branch.
It's the only such growth on the tree, which seems to have a normal shape, buds beginning to form on the branches. When I look up, I see a few pine cones silhouetted against the usual slate-gray sky of Portland in March.
Pine cones? In a deciduous tree? Maybe they fell from a neighboring tree. I look about for likely suspects. None. There's a stubby palm-like tree growing in the front yard of the house, adding a disconcertingly Caribbean note to the landscape. The porch of the house has some trailing potted plants and a brashly colored wreath, flowers so bright they are likely fake, hanging near the door.
Nothing fits. Not the witches'-broom, the pine cones, the palm tree, nor the out of place wreath that looks like it belongs on a powder-room wall. Some sort of enchantment is in progress on Northeast 28th Avenue. Change is in the air. Connectivity is scattered.
I walk on, and the spell closes behind me.
posted by Fran at 6:18 PM
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