Bleeding canker...
Phytophthora bleeding canker is a disease caused by multiple species of Phytophthora, which invade the bark and outer sapwood of trees. The pathogen is known to attack shrubs and trees that are already under stress, and maybe fatal to trees–if left untreated. Davey.
Ironic that we have been felling all those little sycamores (about which I wrote a sad poem) and here is one dying on its own.
Not everyone found the day saddening.
Yep. They made mushrooms out of the decapitated trees!
Anyway, it's ironic too that the disease is so... pretty.
It's less pretty but no less intriguing under the microscope.
On the subject of the microscope, I found some nice little cones and thought I would take them home as decoration. Then I realised creatures were flying and crawling out of them. So I took two and left the rest. They certainly do not look appealing magnified.
Anyway, back to the sycamores and one was trying to grow a baby like a kangaroo - in its pouch.
The seed is in a crack of its bark and it has sprouted.
I saw dead sycamore saplings whose bark had turned black and dropped off. It looked like they'd been burned.
I saw sycamores that survived despite huge disabilities - great wounds to the heartwood which had rotted away leaving deadwood in the centre of the lower part of the trunk with scar tissue around it.
This was all on one walk around the reserve, where I spent a wonderful hour or so staring at trees. There's some oak love and some beech sex on the way.
[Beech sex or beach sex? - Ed]
[BEECH sex. - Crone]
Note: There's a small woods in Charlottetown outskirts full of beech (at least it was before October's Hurricane Fiona) and next to a river beach. I only learned a couple of years ago to finally write with confidence that the area is officially "Beach Grove) (NOT Beech Grove).