Spectacular year for oak leaf cherry galls

 I don't think I can recall a year when oaks hereabouts have hosted so many different kinds of galls, in such abundance. These oak leaf cherry galls, caused by the cynipid wasp Cynips quercus-folii, are growing on an oak near Blaids wood, just south of the city of Durham.

There will be a single gall wasp larva inside each, which will pupate and then emerge in late winter as a mature wasp, after the gall has spent the winter in the leaf litter.

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Sharing a leaf with a severe infestation of silk-button galls caused by Neuroterus numismalis, and a single pea gall caused by Cynips divisa

Sharing a leaf with spangle galls caused by Neuroterus quercus-baccarum

Dryad's saddle rides again

 For the fourth time in a little over two years this old sycamore stump has produced a magnificent display of dryad's saddle Cerioporus squamosus bracket fungi. The previous crop appeared this spring, in April.

It's likely that the fungus was the original cause of death for the mature tree, which must have been felled as a safety precaution since it was growing close to a road.  The fungus has been digesting its remains every since.

In classical Greek mythology 'Dryades were nymphs that presided over the woods. Oblations of milk, oil, and honey were offered to them, and sometimes the votaries would sacrifice a goat. They were not generally considered immortal, but as genii, whose lives were terminated with the death of the tree over which they were supposed to preside.' J. Lempriere. A Classical Dictionary: containing a copious account of all the proper names mentioned in ancient authors. Originally published in 1788.

The underside of the cap, with thousands of tiny pores releasing millions of spores.

Exquisite pattern of scales on the cap of a bracket.

Darwin wasps

  Ichneumon wasps in the garden, menacing with their twitchy antennae and jerky movements, taking a break from parasitising insect larvae to satisfy their own energy needs.

Black Darwin wasp Ichneumon delicatorius

Yellow-striped Darwin wasp Ichneumon xanthorius feeding on nectar from lovage flowers. Its larvae develop parasitically inside the caterpillars of moths and butterflies.

 They are known as Darwin wasps because their gruesome life cycles played a role in undermining the great naturalist’s belief in a benevolent creator. “I cannot persuade myself,” he wrote, “that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their [larval stages] feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”