So last week I went outside and found this large bush full of these things.
They're cool and fuzzy and look like some sort of bud.
This is the type of branch they were on.
Willow. And I remembered it being a regular old willow. Nothing special. The problem is that willow bushes don't have buds like that.
So either someone had uprooted my wild willow and planted some exotic cutie with fuzzy cone-ish buds or ..... well, I didn't know what.
So I took the pics and looked it up.
I heart Google. I searched for 'willow cone image' and found other pics just like the top one. And when I followed the links, I ended up at this post: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/nature/2010/02/gnat%E2%80%99s-not-a-pine-cone/
You have to go there and read the whole post. The guy is hilarious.
Long story short, this isn't a bud, it's a gall formed by gnats - or any of a number of other things like the gnats or that like to eat the gnats.
Now I'm wondering if I should leave 'em alone, or cut 'em off and burn 'em before we have an infestation of some kind.
What do you guys think?
