A gall, I presume

It’s common among flowering spikes of blazing-star, Liatris mucronata, to see dry stalks left over from the previous year. In this dry and broken stalk I noticed what seems to be a gall, a swelling that develops after an insect stings a plant in order to create an abode for itself, or more likely its offspring. How an insect knows to do that, I can’t say, but it’s a common phenomenon. So is digestion, which I also don’t know how to do, but fortunately my body does.

I photographed this dead-end of a dry blazing-star stalk near a living and flowering one on a piece of the Blackland Prairie in far northeast Austin on September 12th.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman