In May or June, a sexual female lays her eggs in the developing buds of susceptible oak trees using her ovipositor.

Each gall contains a central chamber, with a single female wasp larva of the asexual generation, which emerges through a 'woodworm-like' hole as an adult winged gall-wasp in September.

[6] The emerging adult gall-wasps in spring are the sexual generation, producing both males and females, which fly to the common oaks to initiate the formation of the summer marble gall.

[11] The gall growth first appears as a rounded mass of green plant tissue on the leaf buds of the oak, later becoming hard and brown, being up to approximately 25 millimetres (0.98 in) in diameter.

The rounded growths are filled with a spongy mass and a single wasp larva is located in a hard, seed-like cell in the centre.

[3][16] In the territory of former Czechoslovakia, both bank voles and yellow-necked mice feed on larvae and pupae extracted from oak marble galls.

[3] A gall can contain the cynipid wasp as the host that made the gall; up to five species of inquilines (Ceroptres clavicornis, Synergus gallaepomiformis, S. pallidipennis, S. reinhardi and S. umbraculus) eating the host's food; as well as up to thirteen parasitoid species (Eurytoma brunniventris, Sycophila biguttata, S. variegata, Megastigmus dorsalis, M. stigmatizans, Torymus geranii, T. auratus, Caenacis lauta, Hobbya stenonota, Mesopolobus amaenus, M. fasciiventris, M. sericeus, Eupelmus urozonus) living on the host, inquilines and each other.

[5][20] According to recent research, traces of iron-gall ink have been found on the Dead Sea scrolls and on the 'lost' Gospel of Judas.

Iron gall ink is manufactured chiefly by artists enthusiastic about reviving old methods or possibly forgers of old documents.

The galls were the subject of considerable press controversy in the mid-nineteenth century when it was thought that the acorn crop would be ruined and its rapid spread would deprive farmers of valuable pannage (fodder) for their pigs.