Leaf galls on white willow
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Leaf galls on white willow by Lairich Rig as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Leaf galls on white willow
Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 15 Aug 2010
The host tree, a white willow (Salix alba), is shown in Image The leaves are similar to those of crack willow; hairs on both surfaces of the leaves give the whole tree a pale appearance (see the link just cited). The galls are in the form of tight upward rolls of the leaf margin, with some enlargement and reddening of the tissue. At the time of submission, the standard reference work (from 2002) tentatively identified such galls as being caused by the mite species Aculus magnirostris; it noted that more research was needed. The 2011 revision identifies short twisted inrolling (like most of the examples shown in this picture) as being caused by Aculus craspedobius, and long inrolling by Aculus magnirostris, but it also points out that the only way to be certain about which of the two species is responsible is to identify the mites themselves.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
55.947773
Longitude
-4.573562