Whats on my oak tree?

[bigboreblr]

I got this 5 inch or so 15ft young oak with these woody bulbs that kind of look like nutmeg. They're sticking to my small branches. I found one big one with a brown sea urchin looking thing. Does cedar apple rust transfer to oak trees? They're right next to a bunch of red cedars. These little things are attached the the cabrium layer on the branches. You get a little green when you try to take one off.

It's young and I never tried to Id it. Bark is pretty shaggy, like a hickory, but less durable.

I try to keep any oak, walnut, or hickory as a general rule.

Ill try to get a picture of it wednesday.

 

[Native Hunter]

Sounds like galls. Look at this: https://hortnews.extension.iastate....ths are known as,form are known as gallmakers.

 

[letemgrow]

I was going to guess galls also. I’ve had those on some of my oaks, too.


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[BrushyPines]

I have galls on a big red oak in my back yard. It's a pain in my ass during mowing season having to pick up dead limbs with galls on them before mowing. I've read that it is caused by wasp laying eggs in the bark or something of that nature? Is that right?

 

[Lucky_P]

I see those horned oak stem/branch galls pretty commonly on pin oak (Q.palustris) here. They were planted, almost monoculture, in town here, back in the 1960s.... a nurseryman's dream - easy to grow from acorns, grow fast and transplant pretty readily as a fairly large B&B specimen .
Gall wasps really got a foothold in the 1990s, and infestations were so heavy on a lot of trees lining the street & parking lots at my old office, that 40-50 yr old trees declined over a period of a few years and had to be removed in the 2000s. If there are enough of those galls on limbs in the canopy, they essentially starve the root system, as they interfere with normal translocation of sugars produced in the leaves back down to the root system.
Have few pin oaks in the woods here on the farm, but a few are pretty heavily affected... but with the diversity of species, it's not a major problem.

I see oak 'bullet galls' on white (Q.alba) and bur (Q.macrocarpa) oaks, but they're rarely as numerous as the horned galls on pin oak, and do not encircle entire twigs/branches like the horned galls do.