This afternoon, the grands and daughter and I went for a nature walk and came upon this tree with these furry light brown things on the backsides of all the leaves? It put me in mind of fern spores...(I used to have a fascination with them)... At first glance you might think they are really short furry caterpillars, but then we saw tons of them all under the tree on the ground. Well, maybe someone out in blogland will know. Sorry I didn't get a pic of the tree.
Looks like a furry egg sac from some sort of bug. I bet Cindy will know.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting Julie. Looks like the leaves are trying to put on a fur coat for winter! Is whatever it is killing the plant?
ReplyDeleteI see a white bug on one leaf. Did he make the furry spots? Will look forward to someone knowing. I thought for sure YOU would!!!
Did you touch them? They look like their soft, but ugh...I would've doused the tree!
ReplyDeleteVery unusual looking "things"....not anything I've ever seen before.
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Most interesting. I have never seen such a thing before. I bet it is some type of fungus.
ReplyDeleteJulie, I am late in coming to this post. I saw it the other day, and I thought it looked like a gall of some kind, but I didn't have time to look it up. Then, by coincidence, someone brought in a sprig of oak leaves to our arboretum meeting this afternoon that was infested with galls that looked very much the same as your photo.
ReplyDeletePlant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues and can be caused by various parasites, from fungi and bacteria, to insects and mites. The different critters on different trees cause different galls.
If yours is like the one I saw today, it is caused by a tiny wasp larva that lives in the leaf.
Was this an oak tree by any chance?
You know, Cindy, I can't say whagt the tree was...I will have to go back and find out...I want to anyway to collect a few leaves and watch what happens, if anything! This is so interesting!!! It is incredible how many of these were not only ON the tree, but underneath it as well...just piles of them on the ground!!! The thought of that many wasps is nasty!!! Thanks for the info...those furry ones seen over on Bug Guide sure look similar!!!
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