Gall Week 2021!

After spider week, Cal Coast week, and taco day, it is time for Gall Week! Let's start a new tradition, documenting galls on the first week of October. Fall is a great time to go on galling expeditions, when many species have fresh summer/ fall generation on different plant species.

Make observations between 10/2-10/10, and add them manually to our iNaturalist project Gall Week 2021. You can look for specific host plants, specific groups of gall inducers, or anything you find interesting.  If you've never done this before, you can check what are the best host plants in your area. You can use gall or insect books from your area, websites (such as Gallformers.org), and iNat. We highly recommend listening to the recent interview of gall expert Adam Kranz on the podcast Natures Archive. A good way to start is to look at one of the gall projects and see what other people found in your area:

• Galls of California - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/galls-of-california and many other local projects
• Galls of North America - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/galls-of-north-america https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/north-american-galls
• Leaf and plant galls - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/leaf-and-plant-galls
• Galls of the Eastern United States - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/galls-of-the-eastern-united-states

You can download fliers for some of the common Bay Area galls on our main page here. 

You can also join the discussion here - https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/merav/56394-gall-week-2021