Tentacle Porn

Tell me, what do you see in this juniper? Is it dead spots of foliage? Orange flowers, strangely out of place? Some sort of flamboyant pine cone?



. . .or squid?




Or perhaps small, wet muppets?



There isn't much in the natural world that gives me the creeps, but this one has been added to my list. Just imagine for a minute that your skin blistered up into two-inch spherical nodules. Then one day, you got in the shower, and the moist air triggered the vile things to exude orange tentacles of goo.



Yeah, now you get to share my nightmares.



And now that I have caused you to regret eating breakfast, let me reassure you that this bizarre fungus is a plague only to apple orchard owners, and to those who prefer their shrubbery not to appear infested with sea anemones. It's called Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae; or, for the rest of us, "cedar apple rust".

If I could get over the creepy nature of such an organism, I would be fascinated by its parasitic life cycle, which requires alternating between junipers - which it festoons with tentacles - and apple trees - which it doesn't.

You are most likely to see this in the spring, in wet weather, where apple trees and native junipers are in close proximity. In this case, my neighbor has a small orchard, inherited from the farmer who used to own this land, and some standard suburban shrubbery. This is likely why her apple trees have such poor yields. I'll have to let her know - right after I finish yaking up breakfast.