With Monday morning haiku prompts words in my head, I went for a stroll with my camera. Here is what I came up with:
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Dogwood flower top
clusters reach into the light,
dark storm clouds hover.
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Tendrils catching light,
adorn juniper treetops,
cedar-apple rust.
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I felt a bit foolish when I discovered that the fascinating orange flowers suddenly appearing on the junipers around my house are a type of fungus. On Sunday I had been convinced that they were part of the trees’ mysterious reproductive cycle. Not so says my internet source. It’s a type of fungus that spends half of its life cycle on cedars, sending its spores to apple and hawthorn trees for its final chapter. Fortunately there are no apple trees nearby.
Many thanks to Ronovan for his haiku prompt words: ‘top’ and ‘light’. This is the 100th week of his very successful poetry prompt challenge. Please visit his site to learn how to take part or to find pingbacks to other haiku responses.
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Our dogwoods have also started to flower. That fungus looks nasty. Good thing there are no apple trees nearby.
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It’s funny–at first the fungus flowers look attractive but very quickly they lose their shape and become a gelatinous goo. ..and of course if you know the damage they can cause, they will be ominous (I ‘m inexperienced in that department…I think they have a several mile spore distribution range)
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I’ve never seen anything quite like that fungus – brilliant colour though and yes, almost as if alight.
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I love that ‘cedar-apple rust’. So bright, but so out of place.
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It was attractive on the day before I took the pictures (and before I knew of it’s potential impact) 🙂
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Great haiku Janice and wonderful that you found the stimulus on a stroll.
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Thank you Denis. For haiku people are good at creating images or scenes from their imaginations and memories…but I get the most enjoyment and inspiration when recording a moment…
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Hello Janice! Both haiku are nice and I like your pictures too. I would not have known that was a fungus either. I thought fungus was always a dark greenish/blackish color.
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Yes, I hadn’t heard of such a fungus before either–the first day it looked like a flower but after that they seemed to lose definition and become blob like. I think there is something about the word ‘fungus’ that makes people shudder a bit 🙂
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Yes, including me. 😀
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