Silk-button spangle gall wasp
The silk-button spangle gall wasp is a tiny wasp, only a few millimetres long. Its babies make oak leaves grow little round buttons covered in shiny golden hairs, like silk thread. Each button is a tiny home for one baby.
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Fun facts
One oak leaf can have more than a thousand of these tiny galls.
The silk buttons fall to the ground in autumn and keep growing even after they have fallen.
It has two kinds of families. One makes the golden silk buttons and the next makes green blister galls.
The wasps that come out of the silk buttons in spring are all females.
Most asked questions about Silk-button spangle gall wasp
?What are the little gold buttons under oak leaves?
They are silk button spangle galls. A tiny wasp larva lives inside each one.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Neuroterus numismalis
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Cynipidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Cynipidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Neuroterus numismalis (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 Beentree. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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