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Here are the stats for Gall Week 2025: 13,300 observations, 1004 species, and 886 participants. These numbers will climb as people upload their pics and manually add them to the project. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #inaturalist #insects #mites #nature https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/gall-week-september-2025

Screen shot of a web page on iNaturalist for the Gall Week September 2025 project, featuring a large photograph of a twig bearing contorted, antler-like galls. Below are listings of the statistics, icons of users who had the most observations and greatest number of observed species. Also a listing of which species was most observed overall (red cone gall wasp).

One thing you learn very quickly when photographing oak galls is that bald-faced hornets are huge gall fans, too. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #cynipidae #oaks #nectar #wasps #insects #biology #hymentopera #hornets

Black and white hornet on an oak leaf next to three spherical galls.

@nev I should have given everyone a heads up last week but I was distracted by #GallWeek2025.

iCal event for International Rock Flipping Day. The relevant information is, "Repeats every year on the 2nd Sunday of September." Three alerts are set so that I don't forget.

Found some banded bullet galls (Kokkocynips imbricariae) yesterday. I also found a dollar near the tree. It was a good day. Media, PA, USA. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #wasps #cynipidae #insects #entomology #oaks #quercus

Several small, spherical, deep ruby galls studded with hundreds of yellow warts. Attached to a tree stem.

Excellent podcast on galls featuring Adam Kranz. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #insects #mites #biology https://naturesarchive.com/2023/04/10/spring-galls/

Black cherry leaf gall (Eriophyes cerasicrumena) that has split open and released the vermiform mites that have spent the summer inside. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #mites #cherry #prunus #biology #eriophyidae #macrophotography

Tiny, black, spindle-like gall that has ruptured to reveal a course interior. Still attached to a leaf via a thin green stalk.

@FastGhost @GuyBirkin In case Mastodon ever fails you, upload to iNaturalist. Happy #GallWeek2025 ! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?preferred_place_id=97394&taxon_id=127758

These oak button galls (Neuroterus umbilicatus) give a nice sense of how small cynipid wasps are. I've seen photographs that are so loaded them that you can barely see the leaf surface. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #cynipidae #oaks #quercus #entomology #nature #wasps

Underside of an oak leaf covered with dozens of brown, hairy, donut-shaped galls.

Jewel oak gall (Acraspis quercushirta), living up to its name. Little Crum Creek Park, Swarthmore, PA, USA. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #cynipidae #oaks #quercus #entomology #nature #wasp

Spherical, orange-and-yellow gall with dozens of fleshy cells that look like a fancy raspberry. Attached to a green oak leaf along a yellow-colored vein.

Yesterday's fun gall find was Phylloteras sigma (Cynipidae), a rarely-photographed beauty with no common name. iNaturalist observations are mainly in PA, DE, MD, VA, and DC but BugGuide lists NY, too. Reported on both Quercus alba and Q. muehlenbergii. Little Crum Creek Park, Swarthmore, PA. #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #cynipidae #oaks #quercus #entomology #nature #gallformers

Lobe of an oak leaf with five galls that look like inflatable kayaks, one of which is a mottled red with a yellow interior. The other four are smaller, almost black, and are probably dead.

took the fancy camera to high park this morning!

i was mostly looking for galls for #GallWeek but i also saw plenty of sand wasps enjoying the sun, and a coyote! i was walking away from it but it crossed the street to avoid me anyway and a car that was going too fast had to stop for it 🙄

(there are Plans to gradually #BanCars in High Park, people are big mad)

#galls #GallWeek2025 #bugstodon #insects #wasps #coyote #coyotes #Hymenoptera #Crabronidae #Bembicini

A flowering goldenrod plant with a very ungoldenrod-like rosette of leaves attached to the stem.

An oak leaf, green-yellow with rusty-coloured edges, with the top surface spotted with smooth rust-brown ball-like galls.

A black-and-yellow sand wasp hovering over a little round hole dug in sandy soil. It has a very cute and charming expression.

Rather out-of-focus photo of a coyote on the grassy strip beside a two-lane road, about to cross. There are woods on either side.

@colinpurrington
Got my first one in my garden this afternoon. Stem gall in Helianthus.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/312488464
#GallWeek2025 #Biodiversity #NativePlants #GardenEcology #Ecology

Stumbled onto this gem while admiring observations in iNaturalist's Gall Week 2025 project. The two-tailed gumtree gall (Apiomorpha duplex) is, per "Brisbane Insects and Spiders" blog, the world's largest gall. Like many galls made by scale insects in the Eriococcidae, the species makes sexually-dimorphic galls. This gall is induced by a female; male galls are knobs on leaves and don't seem to be photographed much. #GallWeek2025 #eucalyptus #gall #galls #homoptera #insect #gumtree #entomology #inaturalist #australia
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/312424393

P. S.

Nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors. Here, in a case where any shock may prove fatal, matters are so ordered that, from some cause or other, the things not personal⁠—even the terrible change in her daughter to whom she is so attached⁠—do not seem to reach her. It is something like the way Dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact.

Happy #GallWeek2025!

#DraculaDaily #ReDracula #GallWeek

@colinpurrington Wow, they are amazing! Found some nice galls here too :) #GallWeek2025 #galls #gall

Finally, here's another new-to-me gall that I've very, very tentatively ID'd as something made by Ophiomyia tiliae, a fly in the Agromyzidae. If I get a correction on iNaturalist I'll update this post. Possibly not even a gall! 5/5 #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #inaturalist #mites #flies #diptera #tilia #basswood

Tree stem with a woody, bulbous swelling near one of the leaf attachments.

This gall is new to me so I hope I have identified it correctly. I think its a tupelo leaf edge gall (Aceria dina). If you squint you can see a mite walking on the upper right side of the upper fold, although I'm not sure if it is the eriophyid mite that makes the gall. 4/5 #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #inaturalist #mites #arachnids #tupelo

Edge of a leaf that has a convoluted frill, the edges of which are slightly enlarged to provide homes for extremely small mites.

Okay, @colinpurrington , I’m on the job! #GallWeek2025 #unmitigatedGall #iNaturalist

The Goldenrod Brussels Sprout Gall Fly gall, Procedidochares atra, looks just like the name implies: a cross between a goldenrod and a stalk of Brussels Sprouts.

Tiny oval lump, deep ruddy brown and crusty, with cracks like the crust of a loaf of rustic bread. The cracks are a deep rust-red. It sits on top of a vein junction of an oak leaf, which has a slightly shiny surface and a network of visible veins in the medium green. INat says this is an Oak Leaf Gall Midge.

Spiky fluorescent pink miniature disco ball attached to a shiny dark green oak leaf. INat says this the Jewel Oak Gall Wasp.

Looks like three nondescript nuts hanging from an oak branch, except they are not *quite* the same shape as an acorn and lack the acorn caps. They belong to some sort of gall wasp; iNat thinks the genus is Disholcaspis.

This beautiful gall is made by the fungus, Rhytisma americanum. The common name is "American tar spot" to differentiate it from the other two members of the genus (in North America) that parasitize maples. The others are not nearly as pretty. 3/5 #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #inaturalist #acer #maples #fungus #fungi

Leaf with a raised black disc composed of ridges that look like fingerprints.

This is Andricus nigricens, another cynipid wasp that makes galls on oaks. Each lobe is home to a single larva (and possibly a parasite, because such is life). 2/5 #GallWeek2025 #gall #galls #wasps #oaks #cynipidae #inaturalist #quercus

#GallWeek2025

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