I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

Ellen wrote:
I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

You have the dreaded Marphistes Gall. It is caused by the Marphistes
Mite which mates and lays its eggs in the spring. The plants attempt to
heal themselves by making a "gall" around the egg mass.

Muriatic acid usually proves to be an effective cure, but in this case
stronger measures are required. Go to your nearest fertilizer
wholesaler and beg, buy or steal about a kilogram (about 2 pounds) of
ammonium nitrate. Avoid prills if at all possible, although they will
work in a pinch. When you get home put the ammonium nitrate in a large
baking dish. Mound it up in the baking dish and make a depression in
the center, just as if you were going to bake a cake. Pour in about 1/2
cup of diesel fuel and start mixing the fuel with the ammonium nitrate.
Continue to knead the mixture and add diesel fuel as necessary to
obtain a doughy mixture.

Shape the resulting mixture into a ball about the size of a small
cantaloupe. Before it hardens, be sure to use a pencil or similar
object to poke a fuse hole in it just large enought to hold a small
firecracker. Set your ball out in the sun until it dries completely.
When your mixture has cured, insert a small firecracker into the fuse
hole and use a small dab of putty, spackle or similar substance to hold
the firecracker in place and to fill any voids.

Light the firecracker fuse with a match or lighter and you will see
results immediately.

Don't keep us in suspense. Do tell us what it is.

You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

Try posting them to alt.binaries.pictures.gardens for better results.


Ellen wrote in message
...
I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

LOL!


"Santo Traficante IV" "Santo Traficante IV" skrev i meddelandet ...
Ellen wrote:
I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

You have the dreaded Marphistes Gall. It is caused by the Marphistes
Mite which mates and lays its eggs in the spring. The plants attempt to
heal themselves by making a "gall" around the egg mass.

Muriatic acid usually proves to be an effective cure, but in this case
stronger measures are required. Go to your nearest fertilizer
wholesaler and beg, buy or steal about a kilogram (about 2 pounds) of
ammonium nitrate. Avoid prills if at all possible, although they will
work in a pinch. When you get home put the ammonium nitrate in a large
baking dish. Mound it up in the baking dish and make a depression in
the center, just as if you were going to bake a cake. Pour in about 1/2
cup of diesel fuel and start mixing the fuel with the ammonium nitrate.
Continue to knead the mixture and add diesel fuel as necessary to
obtain a doughy mixture.

Shape the resulting mixture into a ball about the size of a small
cantaloupe. Before it hardens, be sure to use a pencil or similar
object to poke a fuse hole in it just large enought to hold a small
firecracker. Set your ball out in the sun until it dries completely.
When your mixture has cured, insert a small firecracker into the fuse
hole and use a small dab of putty, spackle or similar substance to hold
the firecracker in place and to fill any voids.

Light the firecracker fuse with a match or lighter and you will see
results immediately.

Sorry ... didn't know about attachments ... I'll remember that ... I'm
a newbee here ... and thanks for the information about the other group
.... I'm on my way over there now.

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT, "Cereoid-UR12yo"
wrote:

Don't keep us in suspense. Do tell us what it is.

You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

Try posting them to alt.binaries.pictures.gardens for better results.


Ellen wrote in message
.. .
I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

You have the dreaded Marphistes Gall. It is caused by the Marphistes
Mite which mates and lays its eggs in the spring. The plants attempt to
heal themselves by making a "gall" around the egg mass.

Muriatic acid usually proves to be an effective cure, but in this case
stronger measures are required. Go to your nearest fertilizer
wholesaler and beg, buy or steal about a kilogram (about 2 pounds) of
ammonium nitrate. Avoid prills if at all possible, although they will
work in a pinch. When you get home put the ammonium nitrate in a large
baking dish. Mound it up in the baking dish and make a depression in
the center, just as if you were going to bake a cake. Pour in about 1/2
cup of diesel fuel and start mixing the fuel with the ammonium nitrate.
Continue to knead the mixture and add diesel fuel as necessary to
obtain a doughy mixture.

Shape the resulting mixture into a ball about the size of a small
cantaloupe. Before it hardens, be sure to use a pencil or similar
object to poke a fuse hole in it just large enought to hold a small
firecracker. Set your ball out in the sun until it dries completely.
When your mixture has cured, insert a small firecracker into the fuse
hole and use a small dab of putty, spackle or similar substance to hold
the firecracker in place and to fill any voids.

Light the firecracker fuse with a match or lighter and you will see
results immediately.

OMFG -- You're awful! At first I was trying to figure out what on earth the
ammonium nitrate was going to do and then.... LOL

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT, "Cereoid-UR12yo"
wrote:
You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

As for posting pictures in this group, is it really a problem? Anyone?
This is the group where people come with questions and answers about
gardening matters, and if a photo is useful in communicating or identifying
something, why not? It's not like Ellen posted 20 pictures of her garden
or posted it merely to show it off -- which is what I would think the
alt.binaries.pictures.gardens group is for. If the main purpose of the
post is to discuss something and get answers, it seems rather silly to have
to go to the other group, where (from what I've seen) the knowledgable
people aren't.

I could be mistaken, but it sure looks like what's known as a "puffball".
which is actually a form of fungus. In western Oregon they grow in moist
underbrushy areas, and it seems that they like growing on oak leaves or
branches for some reason. They range from a spongy, mushroom-like,
consistency to a thin woody shell. If you crush one of these balls, it
sends out a "puff" of fine dust-like stuff, which I assume to be spores.

Now that I look at your picture more closely, that sure looks like an oak
leaf to me.

I found a lot of descriptions of puffballs on the web, but not a lot of
pictures that really show what they are like, especially on the inside.
Here's one site that has a couple of good photos...

http://www.und.edu/org/ndwild/puff.html
http://host04.ipowerweb.com/~naturen...coperdon_sp.ht
ml
http://showcase.netins.net/web/grace/fun11.html


These sites were somewhat less helpful... ;-)

http://www.geocities.com/tanyaburr20...spuffball.html
http://www.ironfrog.com/libcats/map/...s/eng-puff.htm

Hope that helps. Am I close?

--Steve


Ellen wrote in
:

I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

Agent Friday wrote:

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT, "Cereoid-UR12yo"
wrote:
You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

As for posting pictures in this group, is it really a problem? Anyone?

Here's what it does at the very least.
A picture takes up a lot more space & most ISPs determine how long
they leave posts on their server by how much room they take up. A
couple pictures could make all but the last couple days unavailable on
a lot of servers.

Other ISPs just kill any messages with attachments sent to text
groups. [Mindspring did when I was there-- and I know RR doesn't, but
somewhere downstream the attachment was stripped from Ellen's message]

If the ratio of pictures to text gets too high, many servers will just
drop the group altogether. That's what binary groups [or the web]
are for.


This is the group where people come with questions and answers about
gardening matters, and if a photo is useful in communicating or identifying
something, why not? It's not like Ellen posted 20 pictures of her garden
or posted it merely to show it off -- which is what I would think the
alt.binaries.pictures.gardens group is for.
-snip-

There are plenty of free websites for photos; yahoo photos--
imagestation.com is one & I know many others.

Most don't require anything more than a web browser to post photos--
and for sharing family photos their great because you just send Aunt
Sally to the site & she can order her own prints in whatever size she
wants.

The advantage for the flower ID pictures that get posted here is that
everyone can see them-- and they'll stay on your site until you take
them down-- not when some server gets full.

Jim

Sorry, but puffballs don't grow on live trees. They are terrestrial
saprophytic fungi. The thing in the picture is a gall of some kind. It
looks just like the ones I'm always stepping on under chestnut oak.


"Agent Friday" wrote in message
...
I could be mistaken, but it sure looks like what's known as a "puffball".
which is actually a form of fungus. In western Oregon they grow in moist
underbrushy areas, and it seems that they like growing on oak leaves or
branches for some reason. They range from a spongy, mushroom-like,
consistency to a thin woody shell. If you crush one of these balls, it
sends out a "puff" of fine dust-like stuff, which I assume to be spores.

Now that I look at your picture more closely, that sure looks like an oak
leaf to me.

I found a lot of descriptions of puffballs on the web, but not a lot of
pictures that really show what they are like, especially on the inside.
Here's one site that has a couple of good photos...

http://www.und.edu/org/ndwild/puff.html
http://host04.ipowerweb.com/~naturen...coperdon_sp.ht
ml
http://showcase.netins.net/web/grace/fun11.html


These sites were somewhat less helpful... ;-)

http://www.geocities.com/tanyaburr20...spuffball.html
http://www.ironfrog.com/libcats/map/...s/eng-puff.htm

Hope that helps. Am I close?

--Steve


Ellen wrote in
:

I've seen these from time to time in my garden. This one, if I'm not
mistaken, looked like it was *attached* to a withered ivy leaf.

I cut it open to see what was inside. Fascinating ... what is it?

TIA

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 09:51:30 GMT, Agent Friday
typed these words:

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT, "Cereoid-UR12yo"
wrote:
You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

As for posting pictures in this group, is it really a problem? Anyone?
This is the group where people come with questions and answers about
gardening matters, and if a photo is useful in communicating or identifying
something, why not? It's not like Ellen posted 20 pictures of her garden
or posted it merely to show it off -- which is what I would think the
alt.binaries.pictures.gardens group is for. If the main purpose of the
post is to discuss something and get answers, it seems rather silly to have
to go to the other group, where (from what I've seen) the knowledgable
people aren't.


Yes, it's a problem. With dial-up, a picture may take a minute to
download. If twenty people post one picture each, a person on dial-up
who is *not* on an unlimited internet plan will be downloading twenty
minutes worth of stuff he hadn't planned to. Posting binaries to a
text-only group is considered quite inconsiderate.

Julie

http://www.bobsloansampler.com/

Bearskin to Holly Fork: Stories from Appalachia
by Bob Sloan ISBN: 1-893239-21-7

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 09:51:30 GMT, Agent Friday
wrote:

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT, "Cereoid-UR12yo"
wrote:
You cannot attach photos to this newsgroup.

As for posting pictures in this group, is it really a problem? Anyone?

Yes, indeed it is. This is a text-only newsgroup. Photos for this
group are properly posted to alt.binaries.pictures.gardens and can be
referred to so that those with metered connections or just a
disinclination to spent long periods of time involuntarily downloading
photos of My Favorite Weed can get on with the Q&A of the group. Do
NOT post binaries, photos or your favorite song, to text-only
newsgroups.

Fair enough


Jim Elbrecht wrote in
:

Here's what it does at the very least.
A picture takes up a lot more space & most ISPs determine how long
they leave posts on their server by how much room they take up. A
couple pictures could make all but the last couple days unavailable on
a lot of servers.

Other ISPs just kill any messages with attachments sent to text
groups. [Mindspring did when I was there-- and I know RR doesn't, but
somewhere downstream the attachment was stripped from Ellen's message]

If the ratio of pictures to text gets too high, many servers will just
drop the group altogether. That's what binary groups [or the web]
are for.

Jim