Your observations on nature
In an unused compost heap covered with weeds I found a grub about 10 cm long and slightly thicker than my little finger. The body was concertinaed and looked like chamois leather with some dark brown blotches. It had three legs on each side below a pike-shaped head.
J Rafter, Leixlip, Co Kildare
It was the larva of the cockchafer or Maybug, the large beetle that flies in May and June and blunders into lighted windows. The larvae live underground for three or four years and feed destructively on the roots of crops particularly grasses and cereals.
I am unable to identify a species of tree which is planted in the estates of Limerick city and which are heavily red-berried now. The leaves are superficially like oak with multiple circular lobes. I have in later months noticed a seed shaped growth on some of the leaves.
Pearse Ryan, Limerick.
They could be Swedish whitebeam, which like rowan belongs to the rose family but has lobed leaves. The seed-shaped growths are probably galls produced by the eggs and larvae of a midge which lays on young leaves.