Hairy beech gall
The hairy beech gall is made by a tiny fly called a midge. Its larva lives on a beech leaf, and the leaf grows a little tower around it. People notice these towers, called galls, much more often than the fly itself.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The gall starts as a tiny flat yellowish-green bump. By late summer it has grown into a reddish-brown column up to 6 millimetres tall.
Inside each gall lives just one white larva.
When the larva is ready, the gall drops to the ground and leaves a round hole in the leaf.
The larva turns into a pupa inside the fallen gall, and the grown-up midge comes out in spring to lay eggs on new leaves.
Some galls are smooth and some are hairy, and some grow a little point on top.
Most asked questions about Hairy beech gall
?What is a hairy beech gall?
A little bump on a beech leaf made by the larva of a tiny midge. One larva lives inside each one.
?Where can I find hairy beech galls?
On beech leaves in Europe. They are biggest in August and September.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hartigiola annulipes
- Named by
- Hartig, 1839
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Cecidomyiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Cecidomyiidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Hartigiola annulipes (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Bj.schoenmakers. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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