Gall (Figs 86–87). Asexual galls (Fig. 86) usually occur in groups on the underside of leaves, several per leaf, red purple or pink with white tips. The thick hard spines are 3 to 4 mm long and terminate in a point, some are club tipped or bifurcated. Galls are hard, to 10 mm in diameter, resembling sea urchins. Sexual gall (Fig. 87) in buds; galls are succulent, thin walled, hollow, green and ovoid-globular in shape, 6 mm long (Russo 2006).

Antron echinus agamic

Quercus douglasii, dumosa
Leaf galls, detachable
Fig 108. Covered with stout blunt spines.

Fig 108. Full-grown, red, in August. Contain adults in November.

Cynips (echinus) echinus
agamic form echinus Osten Sacken

Cynips quercus echinus Osten Sacken, 1870, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 3:56.
Cynips echinus echinus agamic form echinus Kinsey, 1930, Ind. Univ. Studies 84-86:191, figs. 24, 156-158, 163, 176, 191.
Diplolepis echina Balduf, 1932, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 79 (28):60.
Cynips echinus Kinsey, 1934, Workbook in Biol.: 35.

To the data given in Kinsey 1930, add:

PARASITE.-Decatoma occidentalis Balduf (acc. Balduf 1932).

Cynips (echinus) vicina
agamic form vicina Kinsey

Cynips echinus vicina agamic form vicina Kinsey, 1930, Ind. Univ. Studies 84-86:196, figs. 25, 177.
Cynips vicina Kinsey, 1934, Workbook in Biol.: 36.

To the data given in Kinsey 1930, add:

RANGE.-California: Sequoia National Park (galls, C. D. Michener in Kinsey coll.).

LIFE HISTORY..—Galls: mature September 4.

Cynips echinus OS
var douglasii Ashm.
Agamic form, douglasii Ashm

Gall, squash-shaped, 5-11 short projections, on leaves.

Adults, Nov

On Q lobata

Cynips quercusechinus (unisexual generation)

These brilliant, monothalamous galls are either red-purple or pink with white tips. They usually occur in groups of several individuals on the underside of leaves.

Hosts:
Quercus douglasii
Quercus berberidifolia

The following species must be transferred to Cynips: as well as the following Antron species: comb. rev., quercusechinus Osten Sacken

Cynips echinus agamic form

Holcaspis douglasii
Dryophanta douglasii
Diplolepis douglasii
Disholcaspis douglasii

Cynips quercus echinus
Cynips echinus
Andricus speciosus
Dryophanta speciosa
Diplolepis speciosa
Dryophanta echinus
Diplolepis echina
Dryophanta echina

Gall: Spherical to squash-shaped, hard and crystalline leaf galls, in most varieties bearing short and blunt projecting tips. Strictly or irregularly spherical, or a regular or irregular, inverted, truncate cone; up to 9.0 mm. in diameter, in most varieties bearing short, stout, often crooked and irregular, spiny projections which are in length not half the diameter of the body of the gall; the surfaces of the galls naked or with a puberulence, whitish or light green or pinkish when young, soon becoming (in most varieties) rose violet to coral red in color; internally filled with a compact mass of crystalline material containing a very few branched fibers, the galls soft as rubber when moist, hard and brittle as glass when dry; a more or less complete cavity in the center of the gall below the larval cell and near the very base of the gall, this cavity with the larval cell making the gall appear, superficially, bithalamous ; the larval cell in- separable, embedded in the compact material of the gall or rarely (particularly in immature galls) held in place by fine, silky, radiating fibers; irregular in shape, up to 4.0 mm. in length, sometimes central in the gall, usually in the upper part of the gall directly under the epidermis, the cell centrally or asymmetrically placed, sometimes extending in part into one of the spiny projections. The gall wholly separable, attached by a point to a vein, usually on the under surfaces, sometimes on the upper surfaces of leaves of Pacific Coast white oaks, Quercus lobata , Q. douglasii , Q. dumosa, Q. turbinella, and Q. durata.

RANGE .—California, Shasta County to the Mexican border, probably in Lower California.

There are few cynipid galls more abundant than those produced by the agamic forms of echinus in the autumn in California. These galls are confined to white oaks, and do not occur north of Shasta County.

The young galls of the agamic forms first appear, at least north of the Sierra Madre, early in the summer; the larvae are mature within a couple of months, and the adults mature at various times from then on, emergence occurring in December or January. It should be noted that in mid-winter, in most of the areas involved, freezing temperatures are rare (varieties echinus and douglasii ) , while the colder days and snow storms of other parts of the region are intermingled with warm days when emerging insects might easily become active.

[Kinsey goes on to describe 6 varieties of the agamic form of this species; see paper for details]