Econnection
Galls
By Karen Dusek

I was lucky enough to have grown up in a time and place where the forest was a safe environment to play. No Game Boy, Nintendo or home entertainment centers for us. We (my sister and cousins, when they visited, and I ) made up our own games using the neat stuff that Mother Nature kindly left lying around. We spent hours stripping sumac saplings to the satiny wood, which turned beautiful shades of yellow, brown and orange, giving birth to many fine stick horses. (I still remember my horror when I caught my dad, who cut the sumac to clear space for a yard, innocently using my favorite “horse,” Sunset, to stir a fire. Fortunately, I arrived just in the nick of time to rescue my faithful steed before it had burned more than its back leg - or was it the tail? It’s hard to tell what’s what on a one-legged horse.)

In our “camp” we made gloppy concoctions of toadstools, leaves and mud for “dinner,” squished plump red honeysuckle berries on our arms and legs for blood and built crude lean-tos and cold campfires of fallen logs and branches, lining the floor with soft pine boughs and needles. For entertainment, we chased each other around on our horses, taking turns being the capturer and the captured.

Through this type of play which, looking back as a more responsible and ecologically minded adult, I hope was not too destructive, I learned to feel at home in the forest and to observe my surroundings closely, if not very intellectually. I discovered such wonders as birch bark, great for writing secret notes in (almost) invisible ink; artist’s conk fungus; sweet fern and , one of my all-time favorite oddities of the woods -oak galls.

At the time, of course, I had no idea that the jaw breaker-sized balls were the homes of miniscule wasps that had somehow over the years adapted to develop a curious symbiotic relationship with oak trees. I didn’t know that inside the “puff balls”, which we incorrectly called them, were larvae, one little white wormy looking thing per gall, or that the larvae somehow caused a chemical reaction that made the tree grow the bumpy, hard-shelled balls that they, the larvae, used for both food and shelter. All I knew was that they made a great crunching sound when I stepped on them and that they were filled with a webby brown substance that somehow reminded me of the pumpkin candy I’d eaten once. (Everything reminded me of food when I was a kid, being forever hungry no matter how much I ate.)

I knew from my parents and grandmother not to pick the delicate Mayflowers or lady slippers or Indian pipes and at some point decided that peeling bark from birch trees might be a little like peeling skin off a person. Somehow I discovered that artist’s conk was a living plant that was providing a useful service to the ecosystem and should probably be left on the tree it was living on rather than ripped off and added to our soup du jour. But I still got a kick out of smashing those puff balls and had no clue what they were until I was well into adulthood and had children of my own.

I was living in Southern California and was on a bird walk when I saw a lovely green ball about the size and perfect shape of a small orange hanging from what our leader said was an oak tree, a fact I silently disputed since the leaves were small, thin, prickly and pale green, not like any oak tree I’d ever seen and I was from the EAST, where there were REAL trees, not the sickly variety that grew in the arid west. Anyway, one side of the ball was red, as if someone had decided it needed some perking up with a little rouge, and it hung there like a Christmas ornament. I photographed it and asked our leader what it was. She said it was an oak apple, or oak gall, and explained how they are formed.

Still skeptical about the name of those trees - I was sure they were some variety of holly from the shape and sharpness of their leaves, - I didn’t swallow the whole oak gall explanation but said nothing so as not to embarrass her. When I got home, I got out my trusty tree guide and looked them up. Not finding them in the holly section, I had no recourse but to look under “oak.” And there they were in all their pallid glory, live oak, Quercus agrifolia.

Nevertheless, I thought, that story about an insect no bigger than one of my stubby eyelashes having the ability to make a tree the size of a house produce its nest sounded too weird to be true. So, I did some further research and was surprised and, OK, maybe a little chagrined, to see a photo not only of the oak apple but also of the little brown ball I had known all those years as a puff ball. I further discovered that there are more than 600 species of cynipid wasps in the U.S. and Canada, most of which cause galls. I was relieved to learn that the wasps had probably left their nests before I, in my youthful ignorance, had so ruthlessly destroyed the balls underfoot, especially since most galls do not harm the host trees.

I learned some valuable lessons that day:

• That it is OK to question even if you are wrong because it causes you to seek answers;
• That all things have a place in this world and should not be indiscriminately destroyed;
• That there are amazing connections that exist between organisms that are separated by thousands of miles; and
• That, if a tiny wasp can adapt to the point where it can make a mighty oak respond to its needs, perhaps there is hope for humankind.

Now when I walk in the forest and find a gall, I look for the hole that tells me the larva has grown up and moved out - or, that it has been eaten by some predatory insect. Other insects may have seen the vacancy sign and moved in, however, so I resist the childish urge to step on it and hear it pop. Occasionally, I’ll find a green one in the spring, newly formed and still soft with life and be glad that I live in a place where such marvels of nature can still be found.

Some fun activities to do with kids - Bring home an oak gall in the spring. Put it in a jar covered with a fine screen and wait for the wasp to hatch out. Be sure to set it free when it does.

Discover why oak galls were used to dye fabric. Place several smashed galls in an old pan, cover with water and a lid. Boil until the liquid is dark brown. This may take awhile. Add water as it evaporates. When the water has cooled to lukewarm (so it doesn’t burn little hands), remove the galls with a slotted spoon and place a piece of cotton or wool fabric or yarn in the liquid. Let it soak until it is the color you desire. Remove and dry. Then make something with it.

Paint faces on dried galls. Glue on dried moss for hair, beads for eyes, etc. Add a ribbon loop on top and you have a Christmas ornament you can keep forever.

Start a gall collection. Look for stem galls, leaf galls, goldenrod galls and others. Do some research first so you don’t accidentally transfer one of the harmful gall insects from one location to another. There is a lot of good information to be found on-line by simply searching under “oak galls.”

You may email Karen at karen@lakeshoreguardian.com.