Foggy

Large sweetgum tree out by the garden.

Friday, 1/02/15

A new cold front is approaching.  Foggy morning.  Light rain off and on during the afternoon.  Steady rain evening an overnight.  Seems like we've had more than our share of gray days with little or no actual precipitation.  At least, we've finally received significant rainfall.

Temperature range:  42°/38°.    40° @ midnight.  1.75" rain today.  2.00" rain for the month.

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Foggy

Sweet Gum Ball

 

Sweet Gum Ball

Sweet Gum/Liquidamber styraciflua

The fruit, popularly nicknamed a "space bug", "monkey ball", "bommyknocker", "bir ball", "gumball", "conkleberry", "cukoo-bir" or "sticky ball", is a hard, dry, globose, compound fruit 2.5–4 cm in diameter and composed of numerous (40-60) capsules. Each capsule has a pair of terminal spikes (for a total of 80-120 spikes), and each capsule contains one to two small seeds. When the fruit opens and the seeds are released, each capsule is associated with a small hole (40-60 of these) in the compound fruit. The seeds are mostly spread by wind.

The dried ball, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, hangs on the branches during the winter. The woody capsules are mostly filled with abortive seeds resembling sawdust.

(Source:  Wikipedia)

Guest post by Jo Smith.

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Celebrate a tree in 2011.  It's easy:  Observe, photograph, sketch, or discuss and share with other tree huggers.  Please visit The Tree Year 2011 to participate or find other blogs post dedicated to trees from around the world.

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Sweet Gum Ball

SkyWatch Friday: Blue Sky and Sweetgum Leaves

Our Sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua) are the only trees in this area having colorful leaves still attached. All the rest have fallen to the ground, helped considerably by lots of wind and rain during October.

The Sweetgum balls are still green and well attached to the tree. Each ball contains hundreds of tiny Sweetgum seeds. Seed disbursal comes in early to mid-winter when the balls dry and open while still attached to the tree. If conditions are just right -- a sunny, dry day with a gentle wind -- all the balls seem to open at once. You can hear a subtle sizzling-like sound as thousands of tiny seeds fall to the dry leaves beneath the tree.

A dried and open Sweetgum ball after it has fallen from the tree. In a "good" year the ground beneath each Sweetgum tree is littered with hundreds of balls. Stepping on one while barefoot is not recommended -- and they make wicked projectiles when shot from beneath a lawnmower.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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SkyWatch Friday: Blue Sky and Sweetgum Leaves