Brain Junk

An oak gall might look like an apple growing on the bottom of a leaf, but it's really a snug home for baby oak gall wasps. Turns out, a gall is more than just a baby-bug playpen. Oak galls have been used for thousands of years to make ink. And, these teeny wasps are part of the reason why Alfred Kinsey had the chops to create his Kinsey scale of human sexuality.image by: manfredrichter on pixabayimage below: The Ellesmere Chaucer, a beautifully decorated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, was created between approximately 1400 and 1410, using iron gall ink for the text lettering. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.Show Notes:Instagram example of a gallDavey Insect and Disease Research Center on oak gallsMaking Ink from Oak Galls from The Huntington museum in CaliforniaWikipedia on making oak gall ink (support Wikipedia if you can, they are a valuable resource)UK's Royal Horticultural Society on oak galls and waspsAmerican Museum of Natural History: Kinsey's waspsNa