Setpember 2024: Because of finding so many galls last week (between an pedunculate and Turkey Oak) we dedicated this day to galls and making gall ink. But Emily had anticipated, and bought along her home made gall ink, complete with rusty nail.
We made our own gall ink from scratch:
On the dissection table we cut all our galls in half (Oak Marble, Knopper and Robin’s Pin-cushion gall). Under Gina’s great microscope camera we witnessed the grubs, the hibernating bugs, awake and wriggle out of their catacomb. The most amazing was the wild rose gall, sometimes called the Robin’s pin cushion gall:
The gall is caused by the larvae of Dipoloepis rosae, a tiny gall wasp. Once a female has laid her eggs, the larvae hatch and secrete chemicals that cause the rose stem to swell and develop into the hairy looking gall. Inside the gall there are a number of chambers in which each grub develops. The insects then spend the winter inside the gall as pupae and emerge in the spring as adults.
The chambers were complex and multiple.
There are more than 900 types of plant galls in the UK caused by invertebrate species such as wasps, mites, beetles, flies, sawflies and plant sucking bugs, with more than 30 types found on oak trees alone. A guide to some of the most common galls can be found here Gall spotter 2020.pdf (suffolkwildlifetrust.org) and there’s even a national society devoted to them British Plant Gall Society
With Kally’s collection of inks, Alder, Oak, Knopper, etc, we drew with goose feather quills. Emily writing out the recipe for Apple Fritters, our reward
Kinda Elders in the woods 