These little hairy tan balls were all over the leaves -- dozens of them. At first I thought it was some kind of little stinging caterpillar -- we have a lot of that type around here-- but it's the wrong time of year for those to be hatching. Buck moth and other stinging caterpillars always invade us in April.
I didn't like the look of them, but when it comes to Nature I've learned that appearances can be very deceiving. I took pictures and went in to check them against the internet to see what I could find out.
After about an hour of searching, I discovered they are actually growths from the trees themselves called fuzzy leaf galls. They form when a non-stinging variety of wasp lays eggs on the tree, and also deposits a fluid that irritates the tree. The tree envelopes the wasp eggs in a gall, which is like a cyst. This response then protects the baby wasp as it grows.
From what I read these particular galls tend to be rare, and evidently they don't cause any real damage to the trees. They also won't sting or otherwise hurt my guy if he touches them. So while they're weird, I'm going to leave them alone. Or maybe leaf them alone? Ha.
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We get galls on our oaks, but they're hard shelled. It's not terrible for the tree unless you have a lot of them.
We did some more investigating and turns out these galls are only on one tree, which extends onto our property from our neighbor's pasture. My guy cut the branches that were smacking him in the face when he mows our yard. So far we've found none on our oaks.