Oak gall wasps have been very active this year if the evidence on the footpath across the road is anything to go by.
The ones that inhabit the acorns certainly create imagination provoking shapes.
I had heard of oak gal ink and intended to try and make some
but it turns out (with a little research and here – isn’t the internet wonderful?), that
there are about 30 different kinds of oak gall wasps and if I want to make ink
I have to collect abandoned oak marble gall wasp homes – small round ones that are, unsurprisingly, about the
size of a marble, brown and smooth, with a little hole in it where the wasp
evacuated to embark on the next stage of its life cycle. They are formed on stems instead of in acorns, and are particularly high in tannin which gives the ink its colour.
Bother.
I was looking forward to the experiment – maybe I will experiment with these knopper galls anyway. It is not like I need the ink so much as wanting to try out the process.
(Useless piece of additional info - did you know that in Danish 'little' and 'small' are not interchangeable? They speak of 'one little thing' and 'many small things'.)
Aha... thank you for this. We have been finding hundreds of these gnarly, sticky things all down our drive recently and wondered about them. P has been collecting them by the sack full!
ReplyDeleteoh - now to find a REAL use for them.
DeleteWe await with interest the results of the ink experiments. Will this blog in future be written on paper with a fountain pen?
ReplyDeleteCheers! Gail.
Fountain pens abound here - F only gave them up a couple of years ago. There are still a myriad of bottles of industrial ink lurking about.
DeleteThe galls are other-worldly and rather beautiful. I shall be interested to read about your ink experiment.
ReplyDeleteHow odd🤔 and yet beautiful.
ReplyDeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteGolly - aliens at work! I think it is worth having a go anyway - trying out things with no expectation can often lead to great surprise - or proof of why not to bother again! Do report back... YAM xx
I intend to give it a go anyway - I was only going to use any ink produced to does some ink wash drawings.
Deletei love the way they LOOK but do not want to touch or have them in the house, what if there are WASPS inside. Wasps are more scary than spiders to me... i had no idea these even existed or that ink could be made from them OR have never even read or heard the word oak gall. interesting, very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't stingy wasps. Perhaps I should say they are not stinging wasps; stingy wasps would be excessively frugal ones, mean about sharing their resources. On second thoughts maybe wasps are stingy.
DeleteSally Pointer has a wonderful program on her YouTube channel about this. I was never able to find the right galls for ink, but I live in hopes.
ReplyDeleteI reckon I have seen the round ones every year but can't recall where now that I have an idea of what to use them for.
DeleteJumpin' Catfish that is one crazy looking alien. What a most amazing Nature Friday post and learning opportunity.
ReplyDeleteHugs Cecilia
Wow. I’m constantly amazed at how innovative nature can be.
ReplyDeleteI shouldn’t really. She’s very clever
How interesting! Staying tuned to see how your experiments work out!
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of these wasps but those are very strange shapes.
ReplyDelete