Friday Nature UNK
So outdoor observers: what fruit on yonder tree?
Admittedly, this is a crappy picture, taken through the window of my car, stopped briefly on a county road and having not gone unnoticed by a nearby barking porch dog.
I think you can see enough to make the ID.
UNK is shorthand for Unknown, of course, not the brother of your father or mother.
Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.
The plant/bush looks like a juniper of some sort… The “fruit” I haven’t a clue.
The host plant is eastern Red Cedar, and the “fruits” are the fruiting bodies of cedar-apple rust, a dual-host pathogen of apples. It takes on all sorts of forms depending on moisture.
https://goo.gl/8ZwGO6
Yes, I was going to guess some sort of fungal infestation.