Now this is a weird one. You are not looking at a flower. Rather it is a nest or a house! A tiny wasp laid its eggs in a twig of a white oak tree. Chemicals which were injected with the eggs caused the oak tree to grow everything you see in the fluffy sphere. So, what you are looking at is all produced by the oak tree. But it has no use for the oak, it is only useful to the wasp larvae inside. It’s as if the wasp is forcing the oak to grow in a very strange way – a bit like when humans breed or genetically modify plants for our selfish purposes. Except, the wasp does it effortlessly and instantly every time it lays eggs.
The outside is complex and beautiful – this one is typical in size, a bit bigger than a table-tennis ball. The inside is just as complex with many individual threads radiating from the center to the surface. Each wasp larvae grows inside one of these threads until it pupates and metamorphoses into an adult, winged wasp and emerges to lay eggs on more oak trees.It really is like a wasp house. The oak provides a substantial outer shell which protects the wasp larvae from weather and predators. The oak also continually grows juicy new tissue inside; by eating this, the larvae get all the nutrients and water they need to grow and develop. Shelter, protection and an all-you-can-eat buffet – courtesy of an oak tree.
The special structures which plants grow in response to this sort of “farming” by insects are known as galls. There are many different types of which the Oak Apple is the most well known. I have seen lots of different galls – but I never saw this one or anything quite as weird and beautiful as this one until I found it in Providence Park. So far, I have spotted half-a-dozen of them around the park – so, I expect there must be dozens or hundreds in total. The one in the photo is on the extreme western side of the park on the red trail.
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