Update: A garden friend mentioned the Leaftier moth/caterpillar and it looks right. I opened about 15 of these on three plants and I did find a few caterpillars. All goners now. What I wasn’t sure is whether the plants set flowers this early and whether snipping the branch below the terminal end would destroy this season’s flowers. So where I could I teased the terminal end out and destroyed the glued leaves only.
Original Post
Anybody know what does this and whether I need to do anything about it? I pulled a couple of these apart and didn’t see any recognizable critter. Some brownish crud.
But the leaves don’t look eaten, more just glued together. All of the damage is at the end of a stem, where the flower would form later in the season. Hope I haven’t lost this season’s flowers.
Thanks for the heads up! I have several hydrangeas to check today after reading this.