Monday, June 15th, 2009 | Author: Mystical
Boppadoo asked:
I don’t have a picture of this thing, but I’ve not been able to identify it for the life of me. While walking in the forest, I came across a bright, nearly neon-green ball with a stem. It fit in the palm of my hand, and was covered with small red dots. It had cracked open, and when I peered inside, there was a “fluff” (like the kind that comes out of milkweed in the fall) inside. Wherever a filament touched the inside, there was a red dot on the outside.
I don’t have a picture of this thing, but I’ve not been able to identify it for the life of me. While walking in the forest, I came across a bright, nearly neon-green ball with a stem. It fit in the palm of my hand, and was covered with small red dots. It had cracked open, and when I peered inside, there was a “fluff” (like the kind that comes out of milkweed in the fall) inside. Wherever a filament touched the inside, there was a red dot on the outside.
It and a few others like it were underneath some sugar maple and beech trees …and I know that it didn’t come from them.
My friends and I have settled on calling it an alien life form. Does anyone have a clue what it is??
RAFAEL
Category: Botany
Tuesday, 16. June 2009
Could be a cottonwood, or beach.
Thursday, 18. June 2009
My guess is that it may not be a seed pod but an “oak apple” which is a gall on oak trees formed by a wasp. The egg is laid on the leaf and the gall grows around the developing larvae. This is what they look like:
cut open showing the wasp larvae:
They’re starting to show up in the woods around me now too.
Some additional info: