Thank you all for looking! Sunnysa (Irene if I remember correctly?) I don't mind questions at all. The white orchid tree is Bauhinia forficata: Brazilian Orchid Tree. You don't see it much in nurseries, but maybe that will change with our climate getting warmer. Some sites rate it's hardiness to z. 11 and some to z. 9. When it was young I covered it with two quilts and wrapped the trunk during a hard freeze, Now I do nothing. It's also called the 'insulin tree' and the leaves are made into a tea for diabetes and other ailments. You can read about it online. The Madonna image on the columnar cactus passed along by Tally is natural, but my husband said I didn't take the picture at the best angle. I'm tempted to notch the head portion to look more like a silhouette. Should I? As for garden art I've had a lot of years to collect plus many have been gifts. Also I've been very fortunate in finding some things at garage sales in my own block. Recently a dear friend who is anticipating a move gave me some of the pieces pictured above for which I am very grateful. There are more that she gave me that I'll post about someday.

Thanks for the answer. She doesn't think the description quite fits. She said the area is woody and not spongy. But I did some reading too and I read that old galls can get a woody interior, This reference seems quite relevant: "Crown gall first appears as small overgrowths on the stem (trunk), crown, and roots – usually near the soil line, frequently at a graft union" However, this reference in the same article seems to go in another direction: "Since the crown gall bacterium infects only through wounds, the disease can be confused with the callus overgrowths that often form at wounds or graft unions." full article: https://ipm.illinois.edu/diseases/rpds/1006.pdf Is her pic beyond "callus overgrowths"? It seems like the plant will eventually suffer if it is galls and as as they encircle the trunk. But yet its going strong for now so is there a reasonable argument to wait-and-see? Reminds me of a medical tv drama I just watched where the surgeon needs to decide whether or not to remove the stomach of a patient because they can't determine if the growths are cancerous or not!

I see this quite a lot in Garden Centers here in the UK They are bare rooted crowns packed in dry peat in a plastic bag with a cardboard cover complete with picture of a huge mature plant. Sold from autumn onwards they hang on racks inside the centre, normally some sort of glasshouse structure. Come the spring things warm up and they start to sprout. Caught early enough and potted up, following Ken's advice they soon look normal. I wonder how many of these unsold packets end up in bins each year! Dave

Thank you so much! After a bit more googling I found it is called a wool sower gall. It was growing on a white oak tree. I love learning something new every day!