Harmful insects Roses

Strange “Flowers” on a Rosebush

These fuzzy red growths are not flowers, but galls. Photo: Peter O’Connor, www.flickr.com

Question: We have been growing a wild rose for ten years now, but this is the first time we’ve seen these wonderful flowers form. I say “form,” since strangely, they seem to grow as much on the leaves as on the rose’s branches. They look like pompoms or balls of fur. They were green at first, but have now turned beautiful shades of yellow, gold, pink and red. Is it possible that they are a parasite of some sort?

Simon Lanctot

Answer: Yes, they are indeed parasites and they’re not flowers, but rose galls, usually called mossy rose galls, rose bedeguars or Robin’s pincushions. Bedeguar traces back to Persian and means “brought by the wind,” although they’re actually “brought” by insects, while “Robin” is the name of a forest sprite. 

They’re caused by a small black wasp known as the mossy rose gall wasp (Diplolepis rosae). The adult is rarely seen, but it pierces a stem or leaf vein with its ovipositor and lays up to 60 eggs inside. This causes the formation of a gall of variable size (the more larvae there are inside, the larger it becomes) covered with a mass of sticky filaments, giving it its typical mossy appearance. The gall is green at first, but becomes various colors as fall sets in.

The larvae feed on tissus inside the gall. Photo: Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons

The larvae feed on tissues inside the gall. If you cut one in half, you will see that it contains holes that the larvae have dug as they fed. The larvae are even edible and considered a delicacy in some countries!

Certain wild roses such as Rosa arvensisR. caninaR. rubiginosa, R. dumalis and R. glauca (R. rubrifolia) are more prone to mossy rose galls than cultivated roses.

A Fascinating Life Cycle

Female mossy rose gall wasp. She’s tiny and rarely noticed. Photo: Thiotrix, Wikimedia Commons

The life cycle of the insect begins with eggs being laid in May. The larvae grow all summer, passing through five instars, and form overwintering nymphs in late fall. In the spring, after a short pupation, a new generation of wasps emerges from the gall. They are almost all females, as this insect usually reproduces by parthenogenesis (without needing fecundation from a male). Then the cycle starts all over again.

But that’s the simple version. In fact, the larvae are often parasitized by other wasps and these are sometimes parasitized by yet other wasps. This is called hyperparasitism. Thus, there is often more than one species of larva inside the gall.

Mossy rose galls are most often found on somewhat stressed roses, for example those growing in very dry soil or very humid ones and also on heavily pruned plants.

Rose leaf with galls. Pretty, isn’t it? Photo: easywildflowers.wordpress.com

The gall itself is essentially harmless and its presence does not seem to weaken the plant in any way, even when it bears many galls. Purists will tell you to remove the galls you find on your roses so that the gall population doesn’t increase next year, but since you find them attractive, I suggest you just leave them. After all, what’s the harm in allowing Mother Nature to continue doing her job?


The mossy rose gall: it’s less a pest than a fascinating lesson about the complexity of nature!

Garden writer and blogger, author of 65 gardening books, lecturer and communicator, the Laidback Gardener, Larry Hodgson, passed away in October 2022. Known for his great generosity, his thoroughness and his sense of humor, he reached several generations of amateur and professional gardeners over his 40-year career. Thanks to his son, Mathieu Hodgson, and a team of contributors, laidbackgardener.blog will continue its mission of demystifying gardening and making it more accessible to all.

2 comments on “Strange “Flowers” on a Rosebush

  1. I am pleased to be unfamiliar with these. The valley oaks here get oak apples, which are big corky galls that can get almost as big as a baseball. They used to get boiled to make ink.

  2. Pingback: Fall gardening | NewEnglandGardenAndThread

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