Strange and wondrous things grow in our woods. Some more obvious than others. It is so easy to simply walk past without ever really understanding what something is or how it came to be. Some things are just so well camouflaged we just simply don’t see. And some we get so used to seeing we forget to stop and understand it.
And then suddenly, one curious afternoon you’ll stop and spot something - before it nearly disappears under your welly. An exciting new finding which blows your mind. Something so out of the ordinary and alien you can help but want to find out more. Well this happened to me! I would like to welcome you to a whole other world of crazy, alien, beautiful and tiny living things which have completely ‘WOWed’ me. Let me introduce the gall.
Cherry gall
This image is of something I managed to spot the other day, hidden under the leaves of the woodland floor. Miniature red and yellow planets, splattered with tiny glowing stars attached to something so ordinary as an oak leaf. The sight didn’t seem quite right to me. It took me a moment to accept that they were in fact natural and not someone’s sweets dropped from their pockets.
After a bit of research it’s clear that these galls were created with far more craft than something from a sweet shop! This is the story of the cherry gall. Our lead character is the tiny black gall wasp. These clever workers begin the story by laying their eggs on the underside of the oak leaf in Spring. The oak then grows a beautiful covering to surround the immature wasp larvae, like the red and yellow covering above. The larva inside the gall feeds on nutrients from the oak to grow through the summer. When the leaves fall in autumn the galls too flutter to the woodland floor where they have to avoid likely wellington boots such as mine for a few months until emerging as fully grown adult wasp! Amazing!
Knopper Gall – www.aphotofauna.com (These commonly form on Oak tree acorns)
We know so little about galls and there are so many types. Not all have wasps for creators. Some mites and even plants themselves can make them. Here’s a useful link from David Attenborough’s ‘Life in the Undergrowth’ series to give a bit more information. See if you can spot the cherry gall in the middle of the video! - http://bitly.com/1DeOFPg
There are so many of these galls about in the woods at Coombes. Now is the perfect time of year to come and see them falling from the trees or on the woodland floor.
And remember to come and tell us in the Visitor Centre what you’ve found!