Saturday, May 03, 2008

Calling All Tree Experts

Ok, I need help from all you tree experts out there. This is the tree in our backyard. When we first moved in almost 5 years ago, people told us this was a red oak tree. I've always taken their word for it. Then yesterday while I was trimming the tree, I noticed a few odd things...
First I noticed that it is now growing little balls off it. I just figured it was starting to grow acorns. You know, oak tree and all. Then I looked up...
and saw these! They are HUGE balls growing from the tree. Right now they are almost three inches in diameter even though they don't look all that big in the picture. They don't look like anything recognizable to me, so I need your help. They actually kind of scared me for a second when I looked up and saw them. I wasn't expecting to see them, so it still kind of freaks me out that they are there. And I really, really want to figure out what the deal is and what kind of tree it is. So, please help me out if you can.
My little brother came over today and said that he had just seen a tree recently that looked just like that, but he couldn't remember where he saw it.

Here's another picture.

Really, any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Our red oak tree makes those same balls. I don't know what their purpose is, but they are normal!

Lynn Leaming said...

I am definitely not a tree expert but in looking it up on Google I found they are called oak galls. They aren't really good for your tree. You can find pictures here http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=slv8-hptb5&va=oak+gall&sz=all
and a description here
http://www.ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/pdfs/gallsOak.pdf Guess I would have rather not known :)

Anonymous said...

I got the same answer as Lynn's when I asked my co-worker. Steph, I emailed you a couple websites about galls on red oaks before I read the comments. Lynn, isn't Google great! What a wealth of info there is out there. Anymore you have to teach kids how to find info rather than the info itself! Knowledge base has increased so-o-o rapidly since coming of technology!!

Anonymous said...

Steph,
The tree expert is Bob Thompson. E-amil Bob and I bet he will have the answers.

Marcus said...

Yeah, we've got a couple of trees in our yard with those...they always told us they were Red Oaks too...not excited to hear they might not be good for the tree. Trees are so precious in Abilene...