It's a Good Year For Them

Each time we walk down the road we're crunching over them - dark brown/black distorted acorns, shed from the trees. The Blip shows a group I actually picked - slightly less developed, still showing the shape and colour of the original acorns. If you're not familiar with them, they're Knopper galls, formed by outgrowths from the acorns once they've been used as breeding chambers for the gall wasp, Andricus quercuscalicis. I've always associated them with Turkey oaks, but modern sources say they need both types of oak to complete their complicated lifecycle.


(Not sure about the white tile as background, but it's the set-up I've been using for my marbles experiments!)