Leaf Rain; Fall at Hastings

December, right? That translates to bitter cold and deep snow in Minnesota, but yellow leaves here. This week the leaves on the valley oak and blue oaks cut loose and dropped. We were getting 1-2" a day in leaf rain. Meanwhile, the sycamore and willows went deep orange along the creeks. Fog and drizzle filled some days, but other warmed to the 70s.

As the blue oak leaves fell, I found a large fuzzy pink adornment on one of them. Joyce Gross at Berkeley reports that this is a mass of galls created by the cynipid wasp Andricus crystallinus (Crystalline Gall Wasp). The hairs make it look like one big gall but if you scrape away the hairs you'll see the individual galls. Maybe not new to Hastings, but new to me! A Christmas gall?