What are these brown balls hanging from my Southern Red Oak tree?
I have seen them before, but this year the tree has so many balls hanging on the bottom branches.
Bown balls on Southern Red Oak tree
It is named oak gall. The trees all over DFW seem to be covered in them.
Interesting !
I found some more info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_apple
"Oak apple is the common name for a large, round, vaguely apple-like gall commonly found on many species of oak. Oak apples range in size from 2–5 cm in diameter and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. The adult female wasp lays single eggs in developing leaf buds. The wasp larvae feed on the gall tissue resulting from their secretions. Considerable confusion exists in the general 'literature' between the oak apple and the oak marble gall. The oak marble is frequently called the oak apple due to the superficial resemblance and the preponderance of the oak marble gall in the wild."
Looks like it is going to be a heavy year with wasps.
That is fantastic ! wasps are great workers in my garden !
Quote from kittriana :
Looks like it is going to be a heavy year with wasps.
It is here too... especially the ones I call 'yellow jackets'. Them lil' suckers are real aggressive, much more so than the red wasps. Every time I've filled the bird feeders this year, they building a nest inside each feeder (I've never had this problem before).
The only way I can accomplish this task is to fill a molasses tub with soapy water & submerse the feeders before they can get me.
It isnt good guys. They are bad enough to kill children caught unwary where I live. Too many.
I cleaned & put up 2 wasp traps on our back porch this morning... we're tired of getting buzzed.
how does this trap work?
Not as well as one would hope, however there are 6 'floaters' as I type this & they are not buzzing us when we are sitting at our patio table (they work well as a lure).
hey I might need to get one of those. where did you find it?
We bought them 4 or 5 years ago at our local feed store, however you can find various wasp traps at any of the big box stores...
Or you can make one:
http://www.prairiestory.com/2010/09/homemade-wasp-trap.html
Very cool. I think I might just do that!