The summer of 2020 was remarkable for the discovery of some gall species in Yorkshire. In late August Annefie and Peter Roberts, Catherine Artindale and Mark Dudley, members of the Barnsley Naturalist and Scientific Society, were enjoying a walk on the old pit stack at Barnsley Main Colliery, South Yorkshire (SE364061). They discovered numerous galls on Dog Rose Rosa canina which at first appeared to be Diplolepis rosae. However, these galls were green with hints of red but the spines or hairs on thesurface of the galls were short and unbranched, up to 3mm in length, very different from the longer-branched red hairs of D. rosae. On many of the short young Rose bushes a number of galls were tightly clustered together in an irregular mass. After checking the identification with Michael Chinery's 'Britain's Plant Galls' (2011) they thought their discovery may be Diplolepis mayri (Fig. 1, pl36). In a concluding statement about this species, Chinery wrote that it has a "similar life cycle to D. rosae but is a much rarer insect and its galls are unlikely to be found other than in southern England."
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