Camellia gall.
GARDENINGTHERE is a fly in the ointment of the diagnosis of the cause of the 'strange fruit’ of the camellia that I featured in my column the other month.
It turns out my initial thought that the plant had reacted to a foreign body was pretty much correct and that it was not, as thought, a natural occurrence at all.
But the occurrence of the strange, palpable mass was caused not by insect eggs laid within the flower but by a fungal infection.
I am indebted to the IW Council’s ecology officer, Dr Colin Pope, for throwing some illumination on the misshapen mass on the Ryde camellia.
He tells me: "Your picture was not a camellia 'fruit’ but, rather as you thought, a gall. It is caused not by an insect but a fungus, exobasidium camelliae, which distorts the shoot tip and it should be removed and destroyed if the owner doesn’t want more.
"Very many years ago a photo of a camellia gall appeared in the County Press because it resembled a small person with arms and legs. It was in the garden of Tom Pretty, who lived at Noke Common, and, although he had occasional recurrences on his camellia bush, it never spread.
"The whitish bloom on the surface is composed of spores."