October 2

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Orange and green maple, on a cloudy day.

Another maple's leaves.

This leaf is from the same tree that dropped the yellow-leaf-with-black-spots we saw several weeks ago.

I took this because of the red red red stem.

My bare eyes hadn't seen the texture on the tar spots (if you click through the link, scroll down a bit).

Isn't this amazing?  Like brains...................

Apparently tar spots are caused by a fungus.  I'd thought they were a result of a wet summer, but -- I guess that's not true; we surely did NOT have a wet summer!

Interesting that some trees are very vulnerable to this, and other maples' leaves show no spots at all.

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