What is this growing on my hemlock?

[AJL]

Quite unusal and interesting to grow- seems a shame to kill it!
You couldve just kept it as a novelty to see what happens and just removed the berries before they ripen if youre that worried it might spread to other trees in your collection- Mistletoe is quite specialised and only grows on certain species.
It should be easy enough to control on yours by cutting off any emerging mistletoe buds or shoots.
It would only spread to other tree hosts after producing berries which are eaten by birds and carried to another tree where the birds wipe the sticky seeds on the bark .
I tried growing Mistletoe on Apple trees years ago - not easy- only 1 out of 50 seeds germinated and that failed after a few months.

 

[Potawatomi13]

Click to expand...

"Yep. My ponderosa has that same bizzarre swelling of the limbs, too "

IF tree is healthy/can be kept healthy physical removal and treatment of exposed wounds should eradicate it. Just not sure of treatment.

 

[sorce]

Yeah.... @Bonsai Nut kiss the mudman, he's the only one under it.

Sorce

 

[Gsquared]

I did some more research and it is mistletoe. These mistletoes are very specific to species, so it shouldn’t infect anything else, save other hemlocks. The swelling in the second pic it definitely there, but twig is so small, we’re talking toothpick to matchstick, it shouldn’t present a problem to clip it of just see what happens. I am carefully picking it off wherever I find it. Hopefully tree will outlast it. So we shall see...