SMUT POPPING OUT OF YOUR EARS
Spongy Galls, Mmmm
Smut doesn’t sound like something that you would want in your corn patch — anywhere, in fact. The dictionary says that smut can be, among other things, obscene language or anything that blackens like soot. The smut I am referring to is a disease of grasses, and corn, being a botanical grass, can get smut.
You probably have at some time seen smut popping out of your ears. Spongy galls, looking like corn kernels that have been pumped up with steroids and painted silvery gray, ooze from between the husks. 
Within days, the galls darken, then burst open to release powdery, olive brown spores. Not a pretty sight to most corn growers. Read more
THOSE “OTHER” RASPBERRIES
Two Eye-Catching Raspberries
Some raspberries are for eating; others are mostly for looking at — the plants, that is. Although you might not want to pluck fruits from these lookers, you might want to plant them in your flower garden. Two different kinds of good looking raspberry plants were recently staring out at me from the woods along a roadside.
The first of these, flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), also known as thimbleberry, could be mistaken for a wild rose.
Flowering raspberry
Its large flowers, however, have broader petals than those of a wild rose, and while the rose’s petals are — well — rose colored, a purple tinge makes the petals of flowering raspberry downright lurid. Read more
WHAT GAVE SUSAN HER BLACK EYE?
It’s All Botanical
What gave Susan her black eye? Her central florets, that’s what. Black-eyed Susan flowers, blooming now and for the next few weeks, are actually made up of two kinds of florets, or small flowers. In the center of each flower are small, tubular flowers called disk florets. Those tubular petals are dark. Hence the black eye.
Black-eyed Susan disk flowers
Florets around the outside edge of the eye are called ray florets, and each one has one petal, large and orange-yellow. The petals point outward around the black eye, like a sunburst. The disk flowers and the ray flowers give black-eyed Susans the characteristic look of a daisy, “day’s eye,” which is the origin of the word. Read more
