Exploding acorns

In the course of this afternoon's brick walk, I came across one or two exploding acorns. Something which we got a lot of one year and which may well, according to RHS at reference 1 be caused by one or other variety of the oak gall wasp. The Andricus quercuscalicis of reference 2 looks like a good candidate.

A problem noticed back in 2008 at reference 3, although on that occasion I did not get as far as gall wasps - which seems odd. I had thought that I had noticed it since then, but search has failed so far. 

Neither the RHS nor Wikipedia think that this is really a problem; rather, a valued part of bio-diversity, without significant effect on oak fertility. While back in 1998, it seems that MoD had a different take, for which see reference 3.

PS: apparently President Putin is rather keen on art like that snapped above: the apotheosis of Catherine the Great - not that far removed from the ancient Roman custom of making gods out of dead emperors or the early modern Roman custom of making saints out of martyrs and other enthusiasts. All part of the glorification of the North Slav mission to take over a large chunk of the world. Very much of a piece with his fascination with the ancient history of somewhere called Rus and his enthusiasm for building very large churches. Apparently he spent his COVID not seeing anyone much and doing deep research - certainly into the first of these, possibly into the second. See, for example, reference 5.

With the poster above, from the second half of the nineteenth century, 1886 to be precise, offered by way of comparison. At least we can say that that was near 150 years ago and the only reason that it might be shown now would be as a vehicle for a spot of empire-bashing, a spot of Brit-bashing.

PS: the telephone had a fair go at the close-up above, without my doing anything other than hold the camera close to the acorn and tap the button. I wonder whether it made its own mind up about which of its three cameras - the are three holes at the back - to use? Or is that something that I have to do for it?

References

Reference 1: https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/oak-gall-wasps.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andricus_quercuscalicis.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/exploding-acorns.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/11/round-and-about-in-epsom-2.html.

Reference 5: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181.