iguanamouth:

actually wait i want to talk about the weird Tree Orbs i found while i was visiting my family a while back

they were everywhere, attached to a lot of the oak leaves on the ground and nobody had Any idea what they actually were, so i took em home and did a little digging

in fact the balls are called oak apple galls, and are caused by WASPS. actual literal wasps are directly responsible for these tiny tree eggs, and inside of them are, you guess it, More Wasps

the insect responsible is called the oak apple gall wasp, and the growth ( which is initially bright green) is caused by chemicals injected along with the wasps egg directly into the center vein of the leaf. eventually the round outer husk forms with the tiny wasplet inside, who lives in and eats the gall until it emerges later as an adult wasp

the lifecycle of em actually starts at the ROOTS of the oak tree instead of right with the leaves - whatever adult wasp that manages to stay alive long enough to lay its eggs puts em directly at the bottom of the tree, where they hatch into larvae that eventually molt into all-female wingless wasps. THEN these wasps crawl up the tree every spring and put ANOTHER egg into the leaf, and the whole thing starts all over again. seems like a lot more steps than necessary but im also not a wasp what do i know 

the apple galls are mostly hollow when you crack em open and look an awful lot like a tiny shaved kiwi filled with string, but theres actually many species of gall wasp that all cause different distinctive growths along their chosen plant, like the artichoke gall wasp

and the beaked twig gall wasp

and others ! the growths themselves dont usually damage the plant though and the wasps are entirely stingless, so if youve got a bunch of these things around your house and had no idea they were filled with little flying bugs until Just Now, no worries

(x x x x x )

that is terrifying