Space age nature

This is one of 40 different plant galls recorded at an event I led for the Wildlife Trust, Bucks Invertebrate Group and Brittish Plant Gall Society. It is a remarkable little gall induced on wild roses by a wasp Diplolepis nervosa. It has two forms, a smooth round pea gall and this one, the spiked pea or sputnik gall. We were very fortunate to have Michael Chinery join us for the event and he told how he had invented the name 'sputnik gall' for this particular gall back in the 1960s, but finds that now younger naturalists don't understand the word 'sputnik'. If you want to get started with plant galls (and now is the perfect time of year) get a copy of Michael's 'Britain's plant Galls' in the WildGuides series.