Daily Note
Every day, a photograph, a poem. We took Guthrie to a new walking spot today, along the very old highway from the 1930’s before the dam was built. It’s part of Steamboat Rock State Park and leads right into the Banks Lake; it’s no longer a road, though, but rather a great dog walk directly through the surrounding bunch grass and other plants.
One of those plants is the wild rose bush, Nootka Rose. We found several decorated with what we thought were little moss balls that looked like ornaments of nature for the holidays. We thought the moss grew on the plant because of all the moisture we’re getting this winter in the form of mostly rain. We were wrong about everything.
I did a reverse image search and found out that the “balls of moss” were really the moss-like structure built through the rose gall wasp’s metamorphosis. What we were seeing was the dark brown/ dark red of the pre-pupal stage before pupa grows into the new adult wasp, a tiny wasp called Diplolepis rosae.
Who knew? And now you do! And, a poem
Poetry
Who Knew? Diplolepis rosae
On the wild rose bush
Sheri Edwards
in winter, moss-like balls
seem like nature’s holiday
ornaments of
rounded leafy filaments
but instead they hold
pre-pupal wasps
waiting for warmer weather
to morph pupa to
adult gall wasp:
Diplolepis rosae
the tiny gall wasp
emerges May to August.
01.28.24 028.365.24
Poetry/Photography
a gall wasp forms this moss-like structure for its metamorphosis– Who Knew? unexpected natural wonder
#smallpoems #clmooc #poetry24 #rosegall #mossyrosegall
I wonder, if I draw a line... 