Alder Tongue

 

These strange growths on alder cones are cause by a fungus - Taphrina alni - but they are actually galls. Like the structures produced by gall-wasps, the natural growth of the plant is distorted by the fungus to produce distinctive structures for its benefit.

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Fallen Tree Lingers

I'd just like to show you a couple of photos I took of an alder tree that fell across a river near here. The first pic was taken just after it fell - May 2003:

The second was taken in February 2014:

 I am amazed that a tree could hold on in a fast flowing burn like this for such a long time. Some of the beggest differences in the images are due more to the time of year, rather than the decade that separates the them. Hopefully I'll remember to revisit in May and get a clearer comparison...

Alder Island

Tree-fetish Tuesday #25

Alder trees seem to love water more than any other British tree. Here is an island in a sea of duckweed, made from the rotten stump of an old alder tree now with a flourishing forest of new growth.

Beautiful glossy leaves, alders grow fast colonising poor waterlogged soils. They grow quickly but are relatively short-lived trees, collapsing as the heartwood rots. Though often sprouting anew from the stump.

Alder leaves against a background of fast-flowing, peaty water - a familiar sight to many from alders clinging to river banks all up and down the country.