Earlier this month my colleague, LyAnn Graff, brought in an interesting looking fuzz ball surrounding a thin leafy branch of a burr oak tree. It was about the size of a golf ball, but with red-tipped ...

Plenty of animals build their homes in oak trees. But some very teeny, tricky insects make the tree do all the work. “What nerve!” you might say. What … gall! And you’d be right. Oak galls are caused ...

Many coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) trees are showing unusual browning in their canopies in the last month or two. If you look carefully, you may see small, crescent-shaped galls forming on the ...

Hundreds of species of small wasps called gall wasps live in the forests of North America. Hundreds more species of them are spread worldwide. In Southeast Missouri oak trees are a favorite host plant ...

What are these blister-like things on the leaves of my oak tree? Will it harm them? P.T., Tulsa The structure on your leaves is a common oak leaf gall and will not harm a mature tree. Galls are ...

Dear Reader: These are galls that have resulted from the stings of the tree tissue by a small wasp as she lays her eggs in the current season’s growth. Oaks are host plants to scores of different ...

When you look up into the bare branches of some oak trees at this time of year, you can see ball-shaped growths hanging there, looking almost like nature’s Christmas ornaments. These are galls. A gall ...

Galls are growths on leaves, stems, branches, trunks, and roots caused by various agents. But they are usually induced by either insects or a fungus of some sort. The exact manner in which insect ...

Oak gall wasps and their predators don’t have the panache of butterflies, but they’re attracting growing interest among both scientists and naturalists. Only 1 to 8 millimeters long, these small ...

Galls cause worry for tree owners each year, but in truth, most of these odd-shaped growths are more of a curiosity than a concern. This is the time of year people frequently begin to notice galls on ...

When you look up into the bare branches of some oak trees at this time of year, you can see ball-shaped growths hanging there, looking almost like nature’s Christmas ornaments. These are galls. A gall ...