Backyard and Beyond

It’s been a good spring for cedar-apple rust. Two weeks ago during the great rain, I noticed several searches for the fungus, Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, leading to my post of last year on the subject. This year I was on Nantucket to see the fungus in its blooming glory, all over the eastern red cedars in the backyard. They look like some kind of sea anemone, but the gelatinous horns here are spewing out spores into the wind. A few of these spores will land on apple trees, where the next stage of the fungus’s two year long, two tree species-hosted life-cycle will establish itself.

I do not cease to be amazed.