Single little fat insect on seedling?

rmx

rmx

Member
Hi all,

I have a seedling which I've germinated in the past week. It's currently about 2 inches high and just beginning to open the initial 4 small leafs. During germination and for the first couple of days after the seedling started poking through the soil, I had it kept in a gently heated propagator. Now that it's a bit taller, I've had it sitting outside for a few hours during the day while the sun's warm enough.

I was inspecting it just a few minutes ago and found a tiny round 'mite' sitting on the stem. Definitely not a regular greenfly, unless it was a very tiny one. This was a little fat, almost perfectly round gnat with tiny antennae. Obvious to the naked eye, but I also looked at it under my magnifying gadget and it was pretty fugly!

Needless to say, I got some tweezers and carefully lifted it off the stem and rinsed it away (:-(I generally hate killing anything, evben small insects, but I don't want my plant jeopardised).

No camera atm, and I can't find a similar looking bug on google images. I'm in the UK, if there's any difference between plant insects based on location. Does this sound like the beginning of a problem, or was it just a random insect chillaxing on my seedling? I carefully looked through the surrounding soil and couldn't find any signs of any other insects.
:?::?::?:

Cheers all!
 
rmx

rmx

Member
Oh great, I'll keep an eye out for more then, scroglodyte :wall:

So are these things actually in the soil at the moment and just waiting to pop out? Damn, that sucks lol!

I wish I could have gotten a picture somehow, I'll keep looking through the images until I find out what it was (or looked like). I'll have a look through the forum for some recommended bug spray and grab that tomorrow I think. Hope I don't wake up to an infestation...

Edit: Ok, after digging through Google images a bit, the closest thing I can say it resembled is one of these white fly eggs

whitefly-lg.jpg

But it was definitely a complete insect. Imagine one of those eggs with tiny eyes and antennae - that's what was on my plant :(
 
rmx

rmx

Member
scroglodyte said:
but tasty!
Click to expand...
lol!

Wow, I looked at those ladybird larvae. That is pretty damn fug!

@cues - good call! Well, out of all the plant bugs I've looked at, it probably most closely resembles this... But slightly different. My bug was very small and fat and white / translucent. I would probably best describe it as a small white tick. I'll go with it being an aphid for now, and hope to hell more don't show up! :wall: Also, when I was poking at it and inspecting it, it was just lying there being fat and ugly. Definitely not the type of bug that would move quickly unlike some of the plant bugs I've seen in this forum section.

Update: 2 days later, the seedling is twice as tall and there's no sign of any more insects thankfully. :blsmoke:
 
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