Tag: corrupt

#365daysofbiking Corruption

August 21st – My goodness, this is strange.

Y’all know I love and am fascinated by insect galls, right? Well the robins pincushion galls on the wild rose I’ve been watching grow for weeks just took an odd turn.

There are several galls on the same rose now, the only plant in the thicket to be affected. Most of the galls are large, colourful and dramatic. But one weedy little on at the end of a twig seems to have got into a bit of a mess.

The photo isn’t great, but one can see that corruption from the implanted wasp egg has not been concentrated in one leaf node; it’s spread to several and there are bright red patches of furry spines all over the adjacent leaves.

Wonder what went wrong there?

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July 25th – These oak knopper galls actually took me by surprise a couple of days ago, but the photos I took weren’t great, so I revisited the saplings they’re growing on today.

I spotted them on a tree near Victoria Park in Darlaston and I don’t think there’s a single normally formed acorn on that tree at all, and yet several adjacent ones have no knoppers at all.

These mutations of normal acorns are of course caused by a tiny wasp that lays eggs in the acorn buds earlier in the year. A secretion the eggs are coated in causes the acorn bud to mutate and grow in a distorted form, forming a gall, with the wasp egg at the centre. 

The larva hatches, and eats it’s way out of the gall, which provides it enough nourishment to grow to maturity.

Insect galls like this don’t hurt the tree, but of course, do affect it’s fecundity.

Isn’t nature amazing?