now that’s interesting

you may recall that i have only two criteria for a STILL blog photo: beautiful or interesting. my long time followers will know that i usually favor beautiful. but every once in a while i see something i’ve not seen before, and although it is not beautiful, it is interesting enough earn a spot in the STILL pantheon.  this is a large, grapefruit-sized gall on an ash limb. out of curiosity i dragged my photo into google image search to see what google thought it might be. two search results came back, and neither of them was “gall”. the results were: 1)truffle (which you can kind of see), and 2) “Belle statue, Dogon Tellem, Mali | lot | Sotheby’s Art D’océan.” now that’s interesting. so interesting in fact, that i may have lost a half hour of my day learning about he Dogon-Tellem peoples of Mali in the 14th century and their carved wooden statues and their utterly fascinating cliff dwellings. you’ve been warned.

ash limb with large galls