Cynips mellea variety carolina
agamic form
Dryophanta carolina
Biorhiza mellea err det Beutenmuller
Diplolepis carolina
Cynips mellea var B Kinsey
GALL. — Woolly when young, becoming naked when mature, then light pinkish brown in color; averaging smaller than variety crassior; usually drawn out to a conical base; usually clustered, on the leaves of Quercus alba and Q. stellata. Figures 292-293, 334.
RANGE. — New York: Nyack (Zabriskie in U.S. Nat. Mus.). New Jersey: Fort Lee and Lakehurst (acc. Beutenmiiller 1910). Richland and Carmel (Kinsey coll.). Virginia: Eastville and Cape Charles (Kinsey coll.). North Carolina: Asheville (Ashmead, types) . Maysville, Marshall, and Cherokee (Kinsey coll.). Kentucky: Dawson Springs (gall, Kinsey coll.). Tennessee: Newport (Kinsey coll.). Missouri: 6 miles west of Dexter (Kinsey coll.). Springfield (R. Voris in Kinsey coll.). Probably thruout the Coastal Plain of the northeastern United States, from southern New York to North Carolina and Tennessee and in the Mississippi Valley from southern Indiana to Missouri. Figure 54.
This is the common eastern variety of the species, well known to all who have observed galls in the Atlantic Coastal Plain region. It occurs westward to the Great Smokies of the North Carolina-Tennessee boundary, and also at Newport, Tennessee, immediately west of the mountains. At higher elevations in the mountains themselves, from Ohio to northern Georgia and Alabama, variety litigans represents the species. In the heart of Georgia and Alabama, and at a few points further north, variety crassior, a close relative of Carolina, replaces the Coastal Plain variety. Extensive field work in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama failed to disclose Carolina occurring- west of the Appalachians until we found it in western Kentucky and southern Missouri where I have re- covered fine series of the insects. From west of Dexter, in the southeastern corner of Missouri, collections made on a small clump of Q. stellata scrub, located very near the fault that separates the river lowlands from the highlands, gave me forty insects, two of which represent the Ozark variety unica and 38 of which are typical Carolina. From Springfield, from near the southwestern corner of Missouri, I have 25 insects, 9 of which are unica and 16 of which are Carolina. The insect is so unique as to leave no possibility of misdetermination, and the galls of unica and Carolina are similarly distinct, so there can be no doubt of the occurrence of the Atlantic Coastal Plain variety all the way across the state of Missouri.
Except for the type collections, all of the insect material I have examined has come from Q. stellata (the post oak), to which the variety seems largely confined. The type specimens recorded as from Q. alba seem no different from this Q. stellata material unless the insects average a little smaller in size. Beutenmuller’s record (in Smith, 1910, Ins. N.J. : 599) of similar galls on Q. prinoides (the chinquapin oak) , and specimens I have from this same oak from Roselle, N. J. (C. J. Long, Jr., coll.) will probably prove to belong to another variety. Weld’s record of Carolina from Q. stellata at Ironton in the Missouri Ozarks should be re-examined in connection with the numerous varieties now described.
Beutenmuller records the galls as occurring in August, September, and October. I have found mature galls still attached to the leaves in the middle of October in southern New Jersey and Virginia, and at the end of October in the mountains of the western part of North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The galls I collected at Dexter, Missouri, late in October (1926), were mature and dropping from the trees, but the insects did not emerge until the following March. I have bred other material early in January. Weld collected galls in October from which he reared adults in the following June, but this seems late emergence for a species in which the other known varieties emerge in the late winter or early spring.
One of my insects from Marshall, North Carolina, seems identical with typical Carolina from the same locality except that it is almost entirely piceous in color.
