Are you kidding me? I'm so dirty right now I don't know if I'll ever get clean! I agree, you can never have enough mulch in Texas. My kids think I'm the biggest freak - nothing makes me happier than free mulch and good compost!

I have found that mulching is essential in my yard, otherwise I have weeds wherever they can grow. Hate the red stuff, it looks quite unnatural (in my opinion). Never heard of gorilla hair, glad you posted the pic. I think that besides weed suppression, the mulched areas do help with moisture retention. I used to use shredded cypress everywhere but I switched to finely cut pine bark this year--but I did have more slugs, so perhaps the cypress was rougher and the slugs didn't like it? Don't know but I never had so many slugs and it was very dry in my area.

agree with above but, i would also stress how important organic matter is... i use tons of "chop+drop... all the extra leaves, vines, twigs, grass, fruit peels, coffee grounds and anything else i can use. i use cardboard or newspaper as a ring around my plants to keep in moisture and keep weeds down... you can use a woody mulch on top of that which has a nice appearance... i generally do this in my front yard, while, in the back, i use leaves, twigs, compost etc... its about a foot deep in many areas, but i make sure to have 3 inches or so clear around the trunk. in my backyard i had used newspaper and cardboard with a little grass clippings and coffee grounds UNDERNEATH. then, leaves on top. the next year i had to add more newspaper , grounds, grass and leaves. since then, i have enough chop+drop leaves and twigs to keep 6in to a foot of mulch. i get about 100lb of grounds from starbucks every week. this attracted worms like crazy. and i have built several inches of soil. the top layer of soil is almost black, soft, moist, and full of worms and other bugs. all those bugs eat and poop.... that waste stream (including dead insects) is excellent fertilizer, and keeps the soil loose and aerated. its basically composting-in-place. i started with sand... plain sand... the house was built on it. if you start with poor soil, you may need to use a small amount of fertilizer to start, but i kept mine as organic as i could... kelp, fish emulsion etc... until the soil is right. no one fertilizes the forest, and it does quite well.

This is pure supposition, but it seems to me that if nothing else, leaves have less carbon mass than wood and therefore have more concentrations of nutrients/minerals per volume and mass than wood. And, as ellatiarella brings out, the decomp rate of leaves is much faster than wood. I agree that while decomposed woody material has benefits ( I use a lot of it myself,) leaves are preferable for both nutrients and turn around time for reentering the soil web. In fact, even in nature the slow decomp of wood benefits carbon sequestration, while the faster decomp of leaves (and more delicate biomass - including grasses and other less durable plant growth) is much more responsible for playing a role in the creation of creating nutrient-rich topsoil. That said... it's also true that any nutrient benefits of composts and mulches are long-term at best. They are not, in themselves, a replacement for situations where fertilizers are needed for optimum plant health.