Resseliella clavula

Causes galls in flowering dogwood ( Cornus florida ): a smooth, clublike enlargement just below the bud in apical branches. Most of the dogwood stem galls on BugGuide probably do not represent this species. When shown the images that were placed here as of 5/29/2018 and asked what should be done with them, Ray Gagné wrote [thumbnails added for clarification]: Charley, that’s some collection of oddities. Thanks for sending these. The last item in the list looks like the one I know, and maybe the second to last also. I would let them stand under Resseliella until we are certain one way or the other and then change them if need be. We should let the larvae, whatever they are, be the judges. Can the yellow larvae in one of your photos be the same as the red larvae of Mike’s? So I vote to wait for some larvae before changing the status. In June 2021, Charley Eiseman sent Ray Gagné some galls resembling the last two examples, and on 6/20/21 Ray reported: I opened the Cornus galls today, got 7, 6, and 16 full-grown, reddish-orange larvae from the three differently-sized galls. I placed two spns on slides, the rest in a pot of peat moss into which they all energetically burrowed within five minutes. These are a Dasineura in the broad sense. I have a note here that says that yellow-orange larvae came form similar galls of another bush Cornus and that adults emerged from the galls in spring. The specimens are at the museum so I cannot refer to the them for a while at least. Still mysterious, but fascinating stuff. At our place in WV where I went yest’y for the day, I checked out various Cornus for galls but found none at all. The number in the pot is large enough to yield some adults, presumably in spring, but I watch the pot through the summer. One never know what to expect.