Unidentified eggs (millions of them!) any ideas?
Unidentified eggs (millions of them!) any ideas?
Should I be worried, or celebrating?
Yesterday I was digging over a patch of uncultivated land for a potato bed in our allotment (recently taken on and unused for several years). I moved a clump of grass and underneath was what looked at first like a patch of very sandy soil (we have fairly heavy clay). When I looked more closely it was clear that they were millions of tiny orange eggs - each one about the size of a grain of sand. What took me aback was how many of them, the clump must have been at least six inches across and 2-3 inches deep of solid eggs.
What could produce this many eggs (surely it must be big , but then the eggs are so small!). There was no sign of any live insect activity around the eggs.
We live in Kent, and the area was mostly brambles and couch grass before I got my fork out.
What I really want to know is, should I be reaching for the boiling kettle or carefully moving the eggs to a safe sheltered place?
Yesterday I was digging over a patch of uncultivated land for a potato bed in our allotment (recently taken on and unused for several years). I moved a clump of grass and underneath was what looked at first like a patch of very sandy soil (we have fairly heavy clay). When I looked more closely it was clear that they were millions of tiny orange eggs - each one about the size of a grain of sand. What took me aback was how many of them, the clump must have been at least six inches across and 2-3 inches deep of solid eggs.
What could produce this many eggs (surely it must be big , but then the eggs are so small!). There was no sign of any live insect activity around the eggs.
We live in Kent, and the area was mostly brambles and couch grass before I got my fork out.
What I really want to know is, should I be reaching for the boiling kettle or carefully moving the eggs to a safe sheltered place?
- Thurston Garden
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No idea that they will be, but I am a murderer and would be tempted to get rid unless any other kinder soul can tell what they are!
Can you post a photo?
Can you post a photo?
Thurston Garden.
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Greenbelt is a Tory Policy and the Labour Party intends to build on it. (John Prescott)
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Greenbelt is a Tory Policy and the Labour Party intends to build on it. (John Prescott)
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possibly, - just possibly - they could be snail eggs???
when looking online for pictures, most of the snail (or slug eggs) where white - but i did find this link
http://www.applesnail.net/content/speci ... culata.htm
any help?
when looking online for pictures, most of the snail (or slug eggs) where white - but i did find this link
http://www.applesnail.net/content/speci ... culata.htm
any help?
|You can't feel lonely with nature as your companion| millican dalton
Well, I went back out this evening, and found some more in my prospective potato bed! If these are a nasty I think I'm going to have to move...
Anyway, here's some pictures. To give you an idea of the size of these things, the dead stems you can see are grass stems:
If these embedded images don't work, here's a link (and can you please tell me if they don't work - not sure if it's possible to directly link to picassa):
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/justin.fun/Eggs
So... any ideas?
Anyway, here's some pictures. To give you an idea of the size of these things, the dead stems you can see are grass stems:
If these embedded images don't work, here's a link (and can you please tell me if they don't work - not sure if it's possible to directly link to picassa):
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/justin.fun/Eggs
So... any ideas?
- Thurston Garden
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Slug/snail too, but the experts will be along presently
Thurston Garden.
http://www.thurstongarden.wordpress.com
Greenbelt is a Tory Policy and the Labour Party intends to build on it. (John Prescott)
http://www.thurstongarden.wordpress.com
Greenbelt is a Tory Policy and the Labour Party intends to build on it. (John Prescott)
But they were all clumped together in a huge bunch (across a large area)! I didn't think slugs or snails would lay eggs like that - it would need to be tens or more of slugs all laying in exactly the same place. I'm now feeling very nervous...grahoom wrote:i think they might well be snail or slug eggs. if you have loads of snails - you could always eat them....
Seen your photos. They LOOK like slug/snail eggs, but I can't find any species which lays its eggs in masses like that. They also look like earthworm eggs, but those you'd expect find only in bundles of 20 or so. Having said that on the one hand, on the other it does not look like an egg mass because the "Eggs" apparently are of all different sizes. If they were eggs, you'd expect them all to be at exactly the same developmental stage and therefore the same size.
At the moment, I'm flummoxed, but I'll keep looking. Don't get too nervous - the man-eating snail hasn't been discovered yet.
EDIT: Having looked again, I'm not ready to totally discount slime moulds yet.
EDIT2: Process of elimination. Unless there was a veritable snail/slug orgy last autumn and lots of the slimy so-and-sos laid their eggs all in the same place (unlikely, to say the least), then these are not snail or slug eggs. There ain't no British species which could do it.
EDIT3: And I'm now satisfied that they aren't insect eggs at all. Only colonial insects could produce such a mass, and these things are the wrong shape for ants, wasps or bees of any description. We're back to fungi/slime moulds. I can't find any such thing which looks precisely like what you have, but there could be a million reasons for that. However, although I now think it IS a slime mould, I'm ready to stand corrected if it "hatches". What you're NOT going to get is a sudden eruption of any known garden pest.
EDIT4: And I just re-read one of your earlier posts. I suspect that you might be able to watch this stuff turn into that jelly fungus you mentioned.
At the moment, I'm flummoxed, but I'll keep looking. Don't get too nervous - the man-eating snail hasn't been discovered yet.
EDIT: Having looked again, I'm not ready to totally discount slime moulds yet.
EDIT2: Process of elimination. Unless there was a veritable snail/slug orgy last autumn and lots of the slimy so-and-sos laid their eggs all in the same place (unlikely, to say the least), then these are not snail or slug eggs. There ain't no British species which could do it.
EDIT3: And I'm now satisfied that they aren't insect eggs at all. Only colonial insects could produce such a mass, and these things are the wrong shape for ants, wasps or bees of any description. We're back to fungi/slime moulds. I can't find any such thing which looks precisely like what you have, but there could be a million reasons for that. However, although I now think it IS a slime mould, I'm ready to stand corrected if it "hatches". What you're NOT going to get is a sudden eruption of any known garden pest.
EDIT4: And I just re-read one of your earlier posts. I suspect that you might be able to watch this stuff turn into that jelly fungus you mentioned.