Magnolia seed pod

They do get the strangest shapes, magnolia seed pods. The parts that develop like small circular lumps contain a red fruit with seed kernel. It's apparently possible to grow new magnolia trees from those, but a lot of care is needed. Normally if they get eaten by birds , squirrels or other garden critters the kernel gets eaten too and goes through a digestive process before ending up back in nature. If you harvest these fruits from the seed pods you need to imitate that digestive process by soaking the fruits, then taken the fruity bits off, scraping the kernel as much as is possible and then keeping the kernels in soil in a packet in the fridge for  a couple of months to imitate winter in the ground, before trying to sow them. So far I haven't been successful with this :-)

For Tiny Tuesday, with thanks to JDO for hosting this month !

Thanks very much for the kind comments and stars for yesterday's golden peanuts mono :-)