Category Archives: Fungus

Tulips: A Matter of Mold

Lessons in Experimenting

May 17, 2026

“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.” ~ J. K. Rowling

Have you ever set foot in a place of business and the first thing you laid eyes on became yours? 

That’s exactly what happened to me on April 13th …. 

Adoption

Upon entering a local grocery store, I immediately fell in love with a beautiful display of tulips growing in glass vases, their rooted bulbs producing bright spring green leaves surrounding fledgling flower buds and blossoms! Without hesitation (or consulting my shopping list), two healthy looking plants landed in my buggy! Like a proud parent, I proudly carted these treasures about while finding the actual items on my list, all the while justifying such a frivolous selection (the lovely tulip nearly in full bloom would be a gift for a dear friend; the other with a wee whisper of a bud would be mine to ‘nature journal’). 

Nature Journaling

In a few days, my friend was enjoying her new tulip, and I was busy charting the growth of mine in my nature journal. It was amazing how quickly that little bud grew. When it broke free of the vase’s rim the petals and sepals (tepals) began to open, and the yellow became more intense while their centers grew more orange. It was very exciting to see these changes.

Disaster

Then on April 24th, something changed. Tiny white dots appeared on the bulb’s papery cover (the tunic) and the tepals drooped. Over the next few days, the white dot population steadily expanded over the bottom of the bulb, along with soft white threads that seemed to reach out from the dots. Mold! A fungus was aggressively devouring the poor defenseless tulip bulb! Why and could it be saved?

Although I’d been careful not to submerge the bottom of the bulb in water, the occasional slip-up had occurred. That, combined with the poor ventilation in the vase and the presence of fungal spores that float naturally in the air made for the perfect mold-loving environment. Even the use of filtered water wasn’t precaution enough to prevent this disaster. Even after gently rinsing the bulb, cleaning the vase and replacing the water with fresh, wasn’t remedy soon enough to save the bulb.  The brief life of my adopted tulip had come to an end. 

Lessons Learned

Following the demise of my tulip, I scoured the internet for diagnostic clues of a fungal attack and effective first aid. Apparently moldy fungus growth on tulip bulbs is very common, and I learned quite a bit about identifying and treating it in my post-bulb moments. Most importantly, never having grown a bulb of any kind in water (hydroponically), had I begun my aquaculture experiment by searching for helpful tips, my tulip bulb may still be alive. That’s my hindsight lesson.

However, knowing full well my passion for research into any and all things, had I 1) paused just a ‘sec’ and admitted to my lack of knowledge and experience in hydroponic tulip rearing, and 2) gone home to conducti my research in a careful and thorough manner, and 3) returned the next day to buy the two tulips, well ….. they might’ve been sold! (In fact I did return the following day and noticed the tulip display was gone.)

There’s something to be said for spontaneity!

“It’s good to be prepared, but spontaneity is very important — just to let yourself go and let it be whatever it is.” ~ Aron Eisenberg

If you’ve successfully raised a bulbed plant in water, what precautions did you take? If you’ve had an encounter with bulb mold, if you were able to stop it’s rapid spread, what measures did you take to save the bulb?  

Hope you enjoyed journal pages I created to chart the life and death of my tulip bulb. Because I was conducting an experiment in hydroponics, I decided to experiment with various watercolor techniques, including trying out something new in adding backgrounds. Please let me know if and which compositions and/or colors you liked. I found experimenting with different watercolor materials and color mixing added valuable lessons for future journal pages. (On my pages I provided a brief description of what was used to color each stage of growth.)

As always, thanks for coming along on my nature journaling journey!

A Honey of a Prize!

Meet the Honeydew Gall-Wasp Gall

April 4, 2025

It’s Spring! 

When the urge to nature journal is too hard to resist, but everything around you is still brown, crispy and covered in dust, I begin looking for any curious phenomena suitable for rabbit trailing (even rabbit tracks work!). The other day while hiking a steep hill, I was looking for sign the oaks were close to breaking bud. Spotting a string of little dark red beady objects lining many of the mostly leafless stems of am oak was certainly encouraging. From a distance they appeared to be swelling leaf buds; at least their color seemed right. But an up-close inspection revealed my hopeful find as last December’s vacated “homes” occupied by oak gall wasp larvae. Having never seen this species of stem gall before, naturally this would be a perfect most curious phenomenon to tackle. And that’s just what I did!

The Honeydew Gall-Wasp Gall

Arriving back home with a small collection of oak stems crowded with tightly packed galls (resembling miniature bread loaves), my work began. Assuming the host oak was a Gambel’s (Quercus gambelii), I began my search of stems galls on that species. Carefully scouring the literature the genus appeared to be Disholcaspis, but none of the species seemed a good match. So after many days in quandary, I consulted my favorite oak gall ID specialist, firing off a lot of questions, written descriptions and photos. Patiently awaiting his reply, I continued to find more resources to review. Gall wasps have a complex life cycle, and their galls are a challenge to identify. 

After 2 weeks a welcome reply arrived from the specialist.  Boy did I feel silly, knowing I should’ve known better! The oak host was not a Gambel’s but a cross between Gambel’s and Shrub Live Oak (Q. turbinella) which produces a hybrid called Wavyleaf oak (Quercus x undulata). Correcting my mistake was key to identifying the stem gall! Picky little wasps, huh? Happy the specialist agreed the genus is Disholcaspis, the obvious species responsible for the gall was turned out to be D. spissa; the Honeydew Gall-Wasp ….. making my discovery the Honeydew Gall-Wasp Gall!

Lesson Relearned  

When nature journaling, despite how excited you may be to find answers, it’s always, always best to slow down, breathe, carefully observe, ponder, question, make connections, and enjoy the journey ahead of the destination! 

Some Gall Descriptions and A Prize!

Outside appearance: Young galls of this wasp are yellowish and hairy. Mature galls have beige-brown to weathered grey sides, are black on top, and have a dull matte surface. They can have a round to ovoid to a rectangular ‘bread-loaf’ like shape. Texture appears mealy-granular. Galls sit snugly directly on the stems (sessile), and singly or in clusters of long compact chains that form all around the stems of host oak species. 

Inside the gall and back outside again: Each gall has one thin walled cell or chamber (known as monothalamous) that sits above the bottom of the gall. This is the larval chamber and is imbedded in dense cellular tissue that becomes a pulpy flesh with age. While the larvae are actively feeding and growing, they produce a copious amount of sticky-sweet honeydew that accumulates on the top of the gall. All of this honeydew attracts hordes of hungry ants and yellowjackets. The ecological importance of these secretions is unmistakeable; it provides a high energy food source for the insects. And while the ants and yellowjackets feed, they inadvertently protect the gall, like little bodyguards, from parasites and predators intent on infecting or eating the growing larvae inside. And another interesting ecological thing ….. the reason the tops of the galls are black and not the same color as their sides, has to do with a fungus called black sooty mold. The sugary secretions produced by the larvae accumulate in quantities too irresistible to the sooty mold. Colonies of the fungus develop rapidly on the honeydew giving the gall tops a dusty or powdery black color. So honeydew is the perfect medium for black sooty mold to complete its life cycle.

What about that Prize? Read on to learn more! Close-up inspection of the galls I collected, and there were about 25, revealed all but one had a single exit hole in a side just below its crusty red-black top. I learned the adult wasps emerge from these stem galls by late December; sometimes waiting for warmish temps until mid January. What happened to the adult wasps in the one gall without an exit hole? Because the gall had a sooty top, implying the larvae had been eating, growing and secreting honeydew, maybe the larvae died at some point or failed to develop into an adult? Had to know! Cutting the gall to find out wasn’t easy. The outer crust fell away first, then using steady knife pressure on the punky innards, the gall popped open, like a box of ‘Cracker Jacks!’ And there, near the bottom of the package, was a single sealed chamber. Carefully I was able to tease out the contents with fine pointed tweezers until out blurped the Prize! An intact cream colored gooey looking larvae, followed by a small puddle of viscous liquid. Even though the larvae filled up most of the chamber, there wasn’t any sign it was alive. And after an hour, when there still wasn’t any movement …. well, darn, I felt he must’ve died sometime before morphing into adult form. But peeking inside the gall did answer the question about the absence of an exterior exit hole.

And now an interesting note about these types of cynipid oak gall wasps: On my diagram, I used the term ‘agamic’ which is a formal label included with the genus/species name (i.e. Disholcaspis spissa ‘agamic’). This means these wasps have an asexual all female population that emerges from galls in late fall/early winter to lay fertilized eggs without needing to mate with males. Then a bisexual generation follows where adults emerge from galls in late winter/spring/early summer. This is the typical 2 generation annual life cycle of cynipid gall wasps, where the galls developed from each generation usually look very different and even occur on different parts of the host plant (on stems vs leaves). It’s interesting that nothing is known about the bisexual generation of D. spissa, but the asexual generation is common, well documented and abundant.

Known host oak species for D. spissa: Look for these galls on Shrub live oak (Quercus turbinella), Wavyleaf oak (Quercus x undulata), Mexican blue oak (Q. oblongifolia), Arizona white oak (Q. arizonica), and Shinnery oak (Q. havardi). 

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Hope you found my post interesting. Have you ever been curious enough about plant galls to look inside? Recalling the first time I saw a gall, I had no clue what it was and why it was precariously clinging to a plant leaf. It was round and hard, and reminded me of a tiny rusty red ping-pong ball. Was there something inside? Would it be squishy, alive, have teeth and bite, or perhaps whatever it was was dead and oh so smelly? Maybe it was some weird kind of flower bud, or a fruit lost under the leaf? Despite being a bit nervous, I needed to know what, if anything was inside. So I cut it in half, and in the center of the ball, suspended on hundreds of delicate threads, was a tiny, wormy creature twisting and turning and wriggling to music only it could hear! That was over 45 years ago, and to this day I still find galls irresistible!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

A Few References

Russo, Ronald A.: (2021) Plant Galls of the Western United States, section on tree galls; oak galls of the SW, page 173. 

Weld, LH: (1957) New American Cynipid Wasps From Oak Galls https://www.gallformers.org/gall/948