British oak galls / by Edward T. Connold.

  • Edward Thomas Connold
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: British oak galls / by Edward T. Connold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with pink or red, lasting for some time, then deepening to brown; upon the trunk it is mostly reddish-brown throughout the whole of its growth, changing at last to chocolate brown. The largest specimen of this gall of which I have any record was composed of five sections, forming an oblong-obvate outline and ob-compressed,and attained a girth of 32 cm. It grew on the short stump of a very old oak tree in a wood near Hastings. I visited the spot intermittingly during a period of twenty-five months to note its growth, and then, as hundreds of imagines had left it and there were signs of approach- ing decay, I removed it for further examination. Another interesting specimen I discovered at Hastings was growing out of an ivy stem encircling a large oak tree. The gall was in its first year of growth and consequently immature. For several reasons I was obliged then and there to remove it, and did so by sawing away a length of the ivy stem, with the gall remaining upon it. It was globulose in form, brownish in colour, with a rough surface, and 25 mm. in diameter. It is now in my collection of oak galls. The popular designation of 44 truffle gall ” is singu- larly appropriate, both its appearance and manner of growth when beneath the ground coinciding with that of the fungus. The black truffle (Tuber melano- spermum) exists a few inches under ground, and although partial to beech woods is found amongst oaks also. Its external appearance is very much like that of a radicis gall. Aphilothrix seminationis, Grirand. (Plate XXIY, div. B.) Cynips seminationis, Griraud, Mayr; C. inflorescenti&e, Schltd.; Aphilothrix seminationis, Adler, Licht., Fitch, Mosley; Andricus seminationis, Mayr, Cameron. English name of gall.—“ The Barley-corn Grail.” Position of gall.—On the stems of staminate catkins and on leaf margin.
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