Capers With Carroll

These are Chinese gall-nuts from the collection that Bruce keeps in a green house. These galls grow on several kinds of trees, and begin when a wasp injures the tissues of the tree to lay an egg. The egg developes inside the gall as the gall grows. The gall also produces valuable chemicals that can be processed out of it. One of these days, I will take a picture of an oak tree in my back yard, here in California, and several different kinds of wasp galls that grow on it. We don't do anything with our galls that I know of.