Recently I’ve been noticing these tiny little green balls of plant life showing up in the garden areas around my house. I moved into the house over the winter, so I have no clue what the gardens are going to produce this summer. I’ve never seen anything like these buggers.
They’re small, green spheres that appear to be plant matter, but they’re not rooted to anything. They show up around the base of the dried brown stalks of the ornamental plants. The ground is covered in ornamental rocks. They sort of remind me of tiny peas - the big ones are only about the size of 1/2 a popcorn kernel, and they get smaller from there.
I can smoosh 'em and they just turn into leafy plant goo.
That’s just one spot, too. There’s 4 or 5 spots full of 'em - mostly at the roots of the plants, but I think there’s at least one spot where they’re just on the rocks.
Pea-Demons. I like it. That’s the new name until we figure out what the REALLY are.
They don’t quite look like the pics of butterfly eggs I’ve found on the net. First off, it seems that most butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of leaves, or other places that are somewhat protected. These things are right in plain sight on the ground. Second, I would expect an insect egg to be gooier when squooshed. These almost seem hollow. A squooshed one looks like a small piece of a leaf that’s been stepped on.
They’re also quite planty. I guess they could be insectoid, but my money’s on them being a plant or a fungus.
They look like slow-release granular fertiliser to me (although it is usually tan or yellow in colour) - do you tend this garden area yourself, or is anyone else responsible?
Alternatively, they could be seeds or even buds/flowering structures that have dropped off something above - are they associated with a single type of plant?
Hard to tell from the small picture though. And they DO seem rather planty in nature, but they’ve been buried under snow all year. They could have gotten wet and weird. I’m not 100% sure it’s fertilizer, but that’s a good bet, and would also account for why they appear around all the plants - the previous owners of the house could have fertilized their garden last fall before the snow showed up.
Mangetout, I will be tending the garden myself, but this is a new house for us. We moved in in January, and the gardens have been under snow until last week, when I first noticed the pea demons.
It’s the rocks that are the giveaway; if these things grew there, they would be on the rocks or the soil or the leaves, but not all three - they have been scattered or dropped - they are on the rocks simply because they are present in great abundance - that there are so many of them might be a result of the same sort of mentality that causes people to double their medication - “If some is good, more must be better!”
Also, bear in mind that this picture is taken in spring after snow melt; there are probably a number of herbaceous plants and bulbs waiting to grow from between the rocks (if they haven’t been poisoned by overdosed fertiliser, that is.
