Kinsey: Gall Wasp Genus Cynips 
231 
FEMALE. — Apparently identical with the female of variety con- 
spicua, q.v. Figures 213, 220. 
GALL.— -Generally spherical (as seen in cross-section), but so dis- 
torted with peculiarly irregular ridges and spines on the surface as to 
appear very irregular, even cubical; up to 10.0 mm. in diameter, com- 
pletely covered with an irregular, often twisted mass of broad, blunt 
spines which are usually flattened and often ridged; the surface of the 
gall smooth, naked, with a microscopic scurf on the younger galls, this 
scurf more or less lost on the older galls; young (but fully grown) galls 
light reddish brown in color, often lighter gray because of the scurf, 
the older galls dark, dirty brown. Internally solid with a compact, 
crystalline substance which is not as hard as in Cynips echinus and 
which contains more compacted, branched fibers; the larval cell large, 
up to 4.0 mm. in diameter, central or asymmetrically placed. Occurring 
singly or in compacted, distorted masses of as many as 8 galls, on the 
twigs (terminally or laterally), on the leaf petioles, or on the veins on 
the upper or under surfaces of the leaves of Quercus lobata. Figures 
195, 205-206. 
RANGE.— California: Ukiah (types, M. Held coll.). Yorkville (F. 
A. Leach and R. S. Walker in Kinsey coll.). Cloverdale (F. A. Leach 
in Kinsey coll.). Kelseyville (P. Schulthess in Kinsey coll.). Clear 
Lake (galls, F. A. Leach in Kinsey coll.) . Lakeport, Bartlett Springs 
and Chico (galls, acc. Weld 1926). Cottonwood (A. W. Gambs in U.S. 
Nat. Mus.). 
Probably confined to a limited area including parts of Mendocino, 
Lake, and northern Sonoma Counties, and rimming at least the northern 
part of the Sacramento Valley. Figure 32. 
TYPES. — Holotype and one paratype female and galls at Stanford 
University, one gall in the Kinsey collection; two galls and one adult 
cut from a type gall in the U.S. National Museum. From Ukiah, Cal- 
ifornia; gall November 16, 1906; insects January 22, 1907; Q. lobata; 
M. Held collector. 
The present re-descriptions are based on the paratype material in 
the National Museum and Kinsey collections, compared with several 
series from Mendocino and Lake Counties. 
The remarkable gall of this species is, apparently, not rare 
in the Mendocino-Lake County area, but it is as far as we 
know confined to that part of California. While often occur- 
ring on the twigs of the Valley oak, one of the two instances 
of a true Cynips gall in this location, it is by no means con- 
fined to the twigs as Weld suggests, for I have specimens from 
petioles and from leaf veins, both on the upper and under 
surfaces of the leaf. Oviposition is evidently not so unlike 
oviposition with other agamic forms of Cynips. 
Weld records fully grown galls containing immature insects 
as early as August. Thru the courtesy of Miss Schulthess 
