Knopper Gall

Here's a weird looking thing, it's a Oak Knopper Gall caused by a small Gall Wasp (Andricus quercuscalicis), the gall is home to the wasp in their grub form. The irregular shaped gall isn't where the weird stops. The Gall Wasp (Andricus quercuscalicis) has a two part life-cycle which requires our native Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) and the fairly recently introduced Turkey Oak (Quercus Cerris).  The Turkey Oak was only introduced into Britain in the mid 1700's. The Gall Wasp itself wasn't known in Britain before the 1960's, though by the end of the 70's they had become well established, spreading as far north as Scotland by the end of the last century. Nature's always changing, adapting to new opportunities. There were concerns that they'd cause untold damage to our native oak population, though that hasn't happened, and our mighty oaks, crowded with life as they are, just adopted the foreign gall wasps and carried on. There's a message for our times there.