As a wise person once said (I’m looking at you, Theresa Green), ‘there’s never nothing to see’. So, during the latest record-breaking heatwave, on a day when I had limited my walk to an hour in the very early morning, I still somehow managed to find a new-to-me species as I walked through my nearest park.

The plant is Geum urbanum, also known as Wood avens and Herb Bennet, and those are galls on its leaves. Now, I’m not sure I’d said this before but I love galls. And the reason I love them is that, for the most part, they are plant specific, which makes them easy to identify, which means I don’t have to spend ages searching through books or pages on the internet to try to put a name to what I’ve found. A quick google of ‘galls on Geum urbanum UK’ and Bob’s your uncle: these galls are caused by the miniscule mite Cecidophyes nudus.

Gall-causing mites are so tiny that most people, including me, have never seen them so I was particularly pleased to find the Dorset Nature website, which has a photo of one of these. A quick check of iRecord showed that these galls are not very common but, as I suspect even the most diligent observers rarely stare at leaves as much as I do, the galls are very probably under-recorded.