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Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here: Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic
by plorg 2y ago
Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here:
Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic acid). I gather from the gallic acid article that galls are easy to crush. Is this why they are used rather than some other presumably more-readily-available part of the tree? Is there something unique about the gall, e.g. it contains more of certain chemicals/biomaterials?
- qwerpy 2y agoNot an expert, just got nerd sniped by the wikipedia article. But from I read about the galls, the parasite (wasp, aphid, etc) that causes it can influence the structure/makeup of the gall through chemical/hormonal secretions. Usually the parasite wants nutrients so it "programs" the tree to grow the gall with a higher nutritional content. As an aside, these are actually excellent questions to ask your favorite LLM. I had to read the entire wikipedia article to have a basic understanding which took me 5 minutes, but I asked chatgpt "do tree galls have more nutrition or otherwise differ from the other parts of a tree?" and "how does the organism causing the gall manipulate the tree's growth process?" and got really detailed correct-sounding responses.
- ofalkaed 2y agoOak galls have a much high tannic acid content than any other part of the tree, 4 or 5 times higher if memory serves. It is also much easier to get to the tannins than in the wood which has better uses like lumber and fuel.