Lycium oxycarpum tail growing a tale

The wrinkling Lycium oxycarpum fruit in picture still shines. Sepal lobes raise their tips on its back, while the long style still attached at the fruit tip is now bare. It was once covered inside the corolla tube.

Does a style from a corolla acquire tale status? Even if the farmers wife cuts off tails, the event becomes a tale, if not a song. Tales from tails are fitting for those sufficiently young and old. Even botanists check such tails.

The fruits two older counterparts in picture remind that the end is near, the mission of seed production nearing completion. Fortitude is signalled by all parts sharing in their accomplishment, maybe most strikingly by the spines and gnarled stem.

The yellow and white cover patches are lichen settled here for lives of their own, committed to life, no matter its nature.