Merriam-Webster definitions:
– Nerve/Effrontery// Bile//something bitter to endure//bitterness of spirit : Rancor// an abnormal outgrowth of plant tissue usually due to insect or mite parasites or fungi and sometimes forming an important source of tannin see gall wasp illustration//a skin sore caused by chronic irritation// a cause or state of exasperation.
Last weekend a severe rain storm hit the Bay area. I found large numbers of oak galls under the trees during subsequent walks. The Diablo Mountain range is full of healthy oaks, not yet hit by oak wilt, the fungal disease ravaging the eastern parts of the US.
The funny, apple-like appendages you see on oak trees during spring and summer,
and then on the ground later in the season, are actually small temporary homes of wasps.
These tiny wasps use certain chemicals mimicking growth hormone to induce growth on the leaves and branches of oak trees, reminiscent of tumors, but not really harmful. There are many species of these gall wasps (800 in the US alone), and they all produce different kinds of galls, often on the very same tree.
The larvae use the galls for shelter and food, and eventually the fully formed wasps bore holes into the wall through which they emerge. Their reproduction is pretty nifty, too:
“Many species have alternating generations, meaning all of the adults emerging from galls during one time of the year are female-only, while the adults emerging in a different season have both males and females. Most species have females that can reproduce using parthenogenesis when they emerge by themselves. This means that their eggs are essentially clones of themselves. What’s more, some species appear not to have any males at all.” (Ref.)
The galls sustain a large ecosystem of birds and ground mammals, but also had their benefits for humans. People have used them to make indelible ink for more than 1400 years. If you squash the pulp of galls and add iron sulfate ((FeSO4) and mix in a binder, usually gum arabic, you get a grey ink that will eventually darken to a purplish black. Use was widespread, and often specified by law: Great Britain and France specified the content of iron gall ink for all royal and legal records to ensure permanence. The United States Postal Service had its own official recipe that was to be used in all post office branches for the use of their customers. In Germany the use of special blue or black urkunden- oder dokumentenechte Tinte or documentary use permanent inks is required in notariellen Urkunden (Civil law notary legal instruments) (I am told by Wikipedia).
I’d rather think about the beauty of those structures, here on my last day in California. And the poetic response they elicit, with so many subtle meanings of the term added, the bitterness of bile, the gall to spit out endless vitriol…
GALL
Those from Aleppo were bitterest,
yielding the vividest ink. More permanent
than lampblack or bistre, and at first pale grey,
it darkened, upon exposure,
to the exact shade of rain-pregnant clouds,
since somewhere in the prehistory of ink
is reproduction: a gall-wasp’s nursery,
deliberate worm at the oak apple’s heart.
We knew the recipe by heart for centuries:
we unlettered, tongueless, with hair of ash,
the slattern at the pestle, the bad daughter.
But all who made marks on parchment or paper
dipped their pens in gall, in vitriol; even
the mildest of words like mellow fruitfulness,
of supplication like all I endeavour end
decay equally in time with bare, barren, sterile;
the pages corroding along all their script
like a trail of ash (there is beauty in this)
as the apple of Sodom, the gall, turned
in the hand from gold into ashes and smoke.
Here is another “girl’s lament“, a poem by Schiller set in an oak forest, intoned by Schubert.
