Robins pincushion

You may have come across these fluffy red pompoms on your walks, these are rose galls, or can be known as Robins pin cushions.

These are actually galls created by bedeguar wasps. These wasps are only 4mm long when an adult. The female lays up to 60 eggs in the leaf bud of a dog or field rose which creates a chemical reaction within the bud and develops long branching hairs of first green, then turning red which protects the developing wasps. The gall has Chambers where individual wasps grow and feed on the gall tissue. After overwintering they emerge as parthenogenic adults in spring with less than 1% being male.