The image on the left is of the Fall Webworm, a tent caterpillar that appears in the late summer on the outer, small branches of a wide variety of trees. There is NO CHEMICAL TREATMENT recommended, but if you can break up the web somehow, a very interested group of predatory insects and animals will be happy to take advantage of the juicy caterpillars inside. If not, the damage is considered strictly cosmetic....trees recover just fine with little or no intervention (interference) from us.

The web is a protective nest in which hundreds of young caterpillars feed. Not a cocoon.

The second image is of a burl....a mass of deformed cells formed as a result of ........WHO KNOWS? These growths may be the result of insect/fungal/ bacterial/ animal/ physical injury of some kind, but no one knows for sure. A burl can occur on just about any species of tree, any where on that tree. And trees go on to live many years, even hundreds, with these large burls.

Thanks alot, rhizo. I won't worry about these things anymore!

you need to torch them