Rhopalomyia antennariae

Family: Cecidomyiidae | Genus: Rhopalomyia
Detachable: integral
Color: brown, gray, green
Texture: woolly
Abundance:
Shape: globular, cluster
Season: Spring
Related:
Alignment: erect, integral
Walls: spongy
Location: bud
Form:
Cells:
Possible Range:i
Common Name(s):
Synonymy:
Name
Notes
Cecidomyia antennariae
missing image of Rhopalomyia antennariae

On two new species of Cecidomyid flies producing galls on Antennaria plantaginifolia

...I observed that the plantlets of Antennaria plantaginifolia covering a sloping pasture in an open wood near St. Francis, Milwaukee, had been so severely attacked by Cecidomyids as to have almost all their terminal buds converted into galls.
[GF note: This probably refers to a different Antennaria species, because A. plantaginifolia in the current sense (e.g. as followed by POWO) probably doesn't grow near Milwaukee. "A. plantaginifolia" in 1888 could have referred to any Antennaria species in the eastern United States.]
...

...produced from a puncture of the terminal bud of the plantlet early in April... The gall on Antennaria, which is from ⅓ to ½ an inch in diameter, is corm-shaped and is brought about by a check in the growth of the scape-like flower-bearing stem, the sessile leaves of which become somewhat succulent, broader and longer than under normal circumstances, and, excepting the tips, which are somewhat recurved, closely applied to one another like the leaves of an onion. Both surfaces of the component leaves of the gall are covered with woolly trichomes, while the parenchyma cells of their more succulent basal portions acquire a reddish coloring matter. Frequently all the terminal buds of a plant to the number of a dozen or more will be found to have been punctured by the flies and converted into galls, which form clusters remotely resembling bunches of young hazel nuts....The numerous larvae are found imbedded in the woolly center of the gall, and though close together, are usually isolated by films of matted trichomes.

- William Morton Wheeler: (1889) On two new species of Cecidomyid flies producing galls on Antennaria plantaginifolia©

Reference: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/55292723


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