Beetle Blight in Local Ash Trees

Recently as I hiked along my rural street, I noticed this strange purple contraption hanging from a tree. Pushing through the lush undergrowth, I managed to get a closer view of the triangle-shaped device, which had what appeared to be a giant tea bag inside. A card on the tree’s trunk explained that this is a U.S. Department of Agriculture observation tree. I figured the government was just tampering with the trees.

On yesterday's front page, Buffalo News did an interesting report on these devices. Turns out these suspended purple triangles are traps, coated with a sticky substance, used to catch emerald ash borer beetles, a pest that is destroying local ash trees.

So now one mystery is solved, and I hope they can contain this threat before it wrecks this region’s beautiful forestery. A similar problem is devastating mountainous areas in Colorado where pine bark beetles are killing off the evergreens en masse:

Pine bark beetles are ruining the otherwise-stunning scenery near Keystone, Colorado (July 2008)

Just one mystery remains: what the heck is the giant tea-bag thing in the middle of these traps?