Cherry gall wasp
The cherry gall wasp is a tiny wasp that lives on oak trees. Its babies make the oak grow round balls under its leaves that look like little cherries. Each ball is a safe little home for one baby wasp.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Each year there are two kinds of generation: one in winter with only females, and one in summer with both females and males.
The winter females lay their eggs in sleeping oak buds, and small red galls grow from them in spring.
The summer females lay their eggs in the veins under oak leaves, and big round galls grow there.
In autumn the big galls fall to the ground together with the leaves, with the next wasps still inside.
People collect galls of a kind of oak to make a product called nutgall.
Most asked questions about Cherry gall wasp
?What are the round balls under oak leaves?
They are galls made by the cherry gall wasp. A baby wasp grows up inside each one.
?When do cherry gall wasps come out?
The winter wasps come out in late autumn or winter, and the summer wasps come out in early summer, usually in June.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cynips quercusfolii
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- Europe
- Also known as
- Common oak gall wasp
Where the facts come from
- Cynips quercusfolii (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 unknown author. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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