Tag: wasp

July 16th – I seem to have it with a cold. I’ve been feeling a bit peaky all weekend with a headache and sinus trouble, and today I couldn’t raise any energy to move until evening – but a short ride in a terrific warm, sunny golden hour was well worth what seemed like a superhuman effort.

In the backlanes of Stonnall, a shed, fallen spent marble oak gall. Spongy, expanded and very different to the marble-hardness of the fresh variety, this had maybe a couple of hundred holes drilled in it where the emerging wasp larva had bored their way out to freedom.

Galls are fascinating and gruesome at the same time. They do captivate me so: I wonder what the tine wasps look like?

May 12th – The rest of the day was marked with damp natural beauty and curiosity; the wild-growing roses were out in St. Matthews churchyard in Walsall, and they fit this decaying corner of God’s Acre beautifully, while not far away, also decaying, the oddity that is Highgate Windmill was standing sentry over the quiet, respectful urbanity as it has done for centuries.

I noted all along the journey that marble oak galls are surprisingly prolific this season, and last year must have been very good for the parent wasps who create them. They hang like red fruits in the oak trees.

Sad to see the Swan and Mitre in Aston still empty: A remarkable terracotta late Victorian pub, hideously beautiful in mock gothic in that way only Victorian boozers can be, this spectacular building holds many memories for me. Many a time I leant on that railing one a summer evening with a pint in my hand watching the comings and goings to late-shift local factories.

Reflecting, I have little physically to show for the few short years I spent haunting this place, but I do have a lifelong friendship and some truly wonderful memories.

The past is best thought of in terms of what was found, not that which was lost.

September 23rd – At Calton, high in the Weaver Hills, I was surprised to find a tree with a huge crop of ripe plums, so ripe that they were falling off the tree and rotting on the ground, food only for birds and a huge army of wasps.

A taste of one of the purple fruit told me why they were untouched – so tart my face nearly turned inside out.

This was no deterrent to the wasps, however, who were too busy to bother the inquisitive human with the camera.

September 4th – This is an interesting find. I’m fascinated by insect galls – the aberrations caused mainly to oak trees by parasitic insects who lay their eggs in leaf and acorn buds and cause them to mutate into safe enclosures for their larvae to hatch and grow.

We mostly know oak apples, the round globes top right – often, like these, with a little hole bored in their surface where the wasp that grew within emerged. Also, I’ve featured a few pictures in the past of the gnarly, fascinating knapper and marble galls. But these are new to me.

This tree at the new pond in Clayhanger was covered in fruits that looked like hops, or alder fruit, as well as healthy, plump acorns. I’ve never seen anything like it, and so asked twitter. My old mate Posh Dave, @tringonometry came to my aid.

These are artichoke galls, yet another variety of insect parasitisation on oaks. You can read about them here.

Both nature, and the usefulness of social media are astounding. Thanks, Dave.

August 22nd – I note a fair crop of acorns this year, and like last, I was caught by false memory with the knopper galls.

I tend to think these parasite-created growths happen earlier in the year than they actually do, and always assume we’re not going to see any when they’ve not appeared by late July. Since they’re caused by a wasp larva hatching in the acorn bud, they can’t occur earlier than the fruit, can they?

The tiny wasp that drills it’s egg in to the fruit bud earlier in the year – coated in a secretion that will corrupt the bud’s growth plan into these curious galls – is pretty unremarkable. But the distorted, knobbly knopper galls are glossy, leathery and fascinating.

Nature can be very weird sometimes.

July 4th – A first for the year, an oak gall. I don’t know if I’m too early or if it’s just been a bad year for the tiny wasp that creates these galls on oak trees by depositing an egg coated in a chemical which causes leaf or acorn buds to mutate and grow into a gall, inside which a tiny hatched larvae feeds, before drilling it’s way out and flying away.

I normally see a variety from mid summer on – the smooth green type shown here, marble gables which are also globular, but veined with white and pink, and knoppers which mutate gnarly growths from acorns themselves.

It’ll be fun to see if I’m early or if the yield this year is indeed quite poor.

August 31st – I rode out via Canwell and Middleton to Middleton Hall for a cup of tea and cake, all the while in steady rain. I nipped down to Bodymoor Heath, onto the canal and up to Fazeley Junction. Back along the old A5 to Weeford, then home via Shenstone.

It was warm enough, and there wasn’t much in the way of wind. The roads were quiet and the riding fast; but it was very, very grey and very, very wet. The countryside dripped silently little droplets of grey summer sadness.

As ever on grey days, there was fun and beauty to be found; the architecture of the canals – not just the bold redbrick house, but the small lock-keeper’s hut with the chimney for a stove (how cosy must that have been in winter?); the Kingsbury lock flight and greenery of the canalside reed bed. Fungus is growing well in the damp, and those polypores were huge. 

Middleton Hall was as stunning as ever.

I just loved the hound tied up outside the cafe. He had an endearing way of looking at you with his head to one side. He was muddy and wet and had clearly been having lots of fun.

The red and orange spiny, furry growth on the rose stem that looks like a ball of thread? That’s a robins pincushion or Diplolepis rosea – a gall formed, like the oak galls by a wasp. 

I asked a few weeks ago why only the oak is bothered by wasp galls; it’s not only the oak, but mostly. Lime trees, conifers and roses suffer too. Here, a wasp lays 60 or so eggs in a tiny, developing leaf bud, surrounded in a chemical which causes the plant to mutate and grow this furry aberration, which is internally quite solid with cavities for the larva to hatch and feed.

Nature is quite horrific in it’s fascination sometimes. Find out more about this curious parasite here.

August 26th – I think I was a bit previous on the acorn thing.

I think acorns affected by galls fruit sooner. Perhaps there’s a naturally selective advantage in this. It’s fascinating me.

In the last couple of weeks, a huge crop of acorns has developed, even on the blighted trees. They came later than the acorn galls, and are plump and where unaffected, a great looking crop.

I’d say now less than 5% are galls.

Is there a guide or information anywhere about this? It’s fascinating me.

August 18th – The poor acorns are really hampered this year – the gall wasps really seem to have affected them. These seem very like knopper galls, which are caused by the wasp injecting a chemical encased egg into the acorn bud when it’s forming. The chemical causes the acorn to mutate, and inside, the wasp larvae hates and feeds.

There are now a good few healthy acorns, though, so perhaps it’s not as bad as I feared, but I do wonder why it just seems to be oaks that are tortured so.

July 29th – Oak Apples, or galls, are an interesting thing. Very visible right now, they are the gall of a type of wasp that lays it’s egg inside new oak leaf buds. A chemical reaction caused by a secreted fluid causes the gall to grow, and inside, the wasp larva feeds on it, eventually burrowing it’s way to the surface and flying away.

Isn’t nature amazing?