August 13th – More oak wasp galls, which I’ve gone all out to find this year for no other reason than they fascinate me.
On a small sapling by the canalside track at Hopwas, hundreds of thousands of almost annular, ring-like growths on the leaves, looking maybe like fungus or some odd egg. These are the delightfully named common spangle gall for the flat ones, and silk button galls for the rounder, more sharply defined ones.
These are all created by the same mechanism – a small wasp injects an egg into the leaf, and a chemical coating the egg disrupts the plant DNA to grow the gall, which leaves a light patch on the upper surface of the leaf where nutrients have been leeched away by the larva growing underneath.
I’m not sure why galls like this captivate me so much but they are absolutely fascinating.
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 