Pumpkin gall wasp
The pumpkin gall wasp is a tiny wasp that lives on oak trees in California. It lays its eggs on oak leaves. The leaf then grows a little round ball around each baby, a cosy home and food store at the same time.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The round balls on the leaves are called galls. Each one is only about 1 millimetre across, as small as a pinhead.
Fresh galls are pale with a darker middle.
The galls grow in spring and summer, but the grown-up wasps only come out the next spring.
It is a very common wasp in California, even if most people never notice it.
Most asked questions about Pumpkin gall wasp
?What is a gall?
A little ball that a plant grows around an insect baby. The pumpkin gall wasp's galls are only about 1 millimetre across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dryocosmus minusculus
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Dryocosmus minusculus (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 Eddie Dunbar. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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