Oak Leaf with Silk Button Galls

In between the growing clouds and in the briefest burst of sunshine, I noticed these silk button galls on the underside of one of the leaves on my very front garden Oak (theme, begins with O... tick). The low sunshine highlighted the three dimensional aspect of these tiny apparent toroids.

They are the home to the second and agamic generation of neuroterus numismalis gall wasp, which will hatch next spring in the leaf debris under the tree. The initial and sexual generation forms in blister galls, of which there were a few on the tree also.

With the weather closing in a bit again, I didn't see there was going to be a better Tiny Tuesday blip, so this has been your biology lesson for the day.

In other news, another tinpot totalitarian has engineered his health emergency with foaming media enthusiasm, and one wonders if we will in fact all now amazingly forget about his tax affairs. I suspect we will.