black eggs ???? SOLVED ! ;-)

[Pambi]

With all of the oddball fungii we've see in our beds this year, we didn't think much about these goofy little 'cups' popping up in a potted brugmansia, although they're obviously NOT fungii. They're firmly attached to small pieces of harwood mulch... almost as if they have their own root systems.
One of the most confusing things, here, is that THIS is the ONLY plant on the property to have these, and all beds have had the same mulch applied.
What first caught our attention were these black nuggets hanging from the undersides of it's leaves ! There are at least a hundred of them, just 'hangin around'. They are suspended by a fine filament, that seems more fragile than those used by Green Lacewings.
They're about the size of morning glory seeds, thick, flat, and VERY hard. Couldn't smash one with my shoe !
The black nuggets are evident up the insides of the pot, as well as along the plant trunk and branches.
Some of the cups on the soil are empty, and some are still very closed up, like a tulip, containing more nuggets !
I've inspected well, and see no crawlies in the pot, nor any winged activities at night.
This has us completely stumped, and we're now referring to them as "Roswell Droppings".
I know, we're weird, but so are THESE !!
PLEASE help before they decide to emerge !! :shock:

(this is the only way I could get the pics to be accessible)

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h234/Pambi2/bcupsonsoil.jpg

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h234/Pambi2/bnightleaf.jpg

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h234/Pambi2/blackeggsonKnightii600.jpg

[sandih]

How strange! They look like little reeses cups. You have me stumped on the hanging things.

[Pambi]

I have some of the most knowledgable friends !! haha.
On another forum, I had several dozen folks hunting these down, and we've discovered that they are "birds nest fungus" !!
The dispersal process is remarkable, and a touch hilarious, actually.
No NEED for anything to carry them around... just had to have a few heavy downpours ! hehe.
Ain't nature wondrous ??
At least I know that DH and I will NOT be carried away in our sleep
by ET-shaped baddies ! YAY !

http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek011001.html
(one EXCELLENT resource)

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/Lect05_c.htm

[sandih]

But you still don't know what the hanging things are, do you?

[Pambi]

Hey, sandi !
Well, even BEFORE finding that info, I was 99.99% sure that the 'danglers' were the same little guys that were in the center of the cups.
They are IDENTICAL.
My ID confusion was compounded by trying to understand HOW in heck they got up to the leaves ... hehe.
Once I read the info, I'm now 100% convinced that our recent rains splashed those little buggers upwards from their little cups,
onto the leaves, trunk, sides of the pot. :D
I've plucked out the cups, and wiped away some of the danglers... that's not as easy as I'd anticipated.
Those little filaments are sticky as all getout !
Maybe a few at a time. :wink:
Leave it to Pambi to find something this weird !
HAHAHA. :lol:

[Kathe Kitchens]

Just curious - since they're doing the job of breaking down the plant material into smaller matter - which is what we want our mulch to do eventually - why didn't you just leave them alone? After reading this post, I wished I had some for my 2nd compost pile, which has lots of twigs that fell from my pecan tree during the recent storms. I'm hoping some of those spores drift my way.

Seems like you'd have left them there, like we do when mushrooms show up to break down old roots, etc. Was it aesthetics more than anything?

Cool topic. 8) I'd seen these before but never read much about them, so enjoyed the info & pictures. Thanks, y'all!

Kathe :D