What a lot of gall

I've seen these spherical growths on the oak trees around the vineyard for years now, figuring them to be some kind of insect incubator. Turns out they're called oak galls and are, in fact, the incubator for the eggs and larvae of a particular kind of wasp called the parthenogenetic gall wasp. At least that's as close as I can come to an answer using the internet.

Oak galls on a local oak tree. You can see the leaf buds getting ready to open.

In French, these formations are called les galles du cynips, with cynips being the common name for the wasp andricus kollari. Again, my extensive quick and dirty internet research may not be precise, but it's probably close.

So, for you language and geography lovers out there, one might say that we live in the land of galls, or in French: le pays de galles (which is French for Wales, U.K.). Wrap your heads around that!