A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

The photo is not of a small planet sitting on my napkin. The day after the last big snow, all was white beneath my feet except for this little brown, round object, one inch in diameter. I thought it might a nut, but it was almost weightless. It perplexed me. Its texture, color and composition seemed tree-like. Its construction seemed shaped by an insect, the way a caterpillar might build a chrysalis or cocoon. 

I didn’t know what to call it, so I couldn’t do a web search. “Little round, brown ball of something” wasn’t helpful. I called my friend and expert consultant. Richard Paterson was the Director of Grey Towers in Milford and also Deputy Director of Recreation, Heritage and Wilderness for the Forest Service. If I am a naïf in the forest, Richard is a maven.  

Richard informed me I had found an oak marble gall, created by a gall wasp’s work on an oak tree. It is called a marble because it looks like a marble, its nearly perfect roundness rare in nature. The wasp applies its special enzyme to the bud of an oak tree, causing the bud to modify its growth into a sphere, similar to a wart or tumor. The wasp then implants its egg, the gall grows around it, and the new wasp emerges twice a year, usually in September and April, leaving the gall on the tree. My gall, sadly, must have fallen before gestation was complete, as there was no exit hole.

 In most cases wasp galls are harmless. The gall itself contains nothing useful to humans, though it is high in tannic acid. Ancient people created ink from these, and some is present in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sources of superior ink were found centuries ago. 

Most wasps prefer to live communally in nests like high-rise condos, everybody up close if not personal. The gall wasp prefers a more singular lifestyle. This oak gall is like a studio apartment or a house in the forest, away from the hives. I get it.