Nature - Images

Interesting Images Deadly ‘Love Vines'

Smooth, shiny balls that cling to the undersides of oak leaves often hold a grim secret inside, or, depending on how you look at it, a crunchy surprise: the dried-up corpse of a wasp, killed by a parasitic plant known as the love vine.

These tiny spheres are leaf deformities called galls — swollen tumors of leaf tissue — and their growth is caused by a type of insect called the gall wasp. These parasitic wasps house their eggs and protect their young inside the galls.

When the scientists opened galls that were in the grip of the delicate orange vines, they found wasp mummies inside; the vines had penetrated the galls and drained the insects to husks for their nutrients.