I've never seen this before, and I wonder if someone out there knows why this is happening. This has happened to two cuttings of the same mother plant. The mother does not have this, nor do the other 10 cuttings. The 'things' on both plants are at the base.
This also has that awful worm/caterpillar that eats holes in the leaves. : ( Never had them before, and I'm having a heck of a time with them now.
Are these weird leaf forms related to the critters eating the upper leaves?
It looks to me like there were a couple stems or leaves trying to grow from that spot and somebody chewed them.
Little boogers!
Do you have any suggestions for eradication? I tried pyrethrin spray, but I can't tell if that's worked yet.
With caterpillars, handpicking them is often the easiest way. I don't think they're really affected by a lot of pesticides. Bt will get some of them but I'm not sure if it gets all caterpillars or just some. Your best bet is to get a pic of the culprit and get it identified, then you'll have the best shot of finding a way to control it.
The only problem is that I have spent 20 minutes scrutinizing the plant and even gently disturbing the soil trying to find a caterpillar, to no avail. I'll keep searching.
Only reason I mentioned caterpillars was because you said in your first post that you had one that had been chewing on your leaves, so I figured you'd seen it. But if you haven't, then maybe it's something entirely different. You still really need to figure out what was doing the damage before you try to control it, not all pesticides work on all types of pests.
AHA! Found the little jerks! Evidently, some wayward moth took it upon herself to lay about 500 eggs in my greenhouse, so today resulted in a bountiful catch. I haven't identified them yet, but now that I have them safely ensconced in a jar, i.d. should be easy.
Thanks for your help!
One of my favorite properties of Pelargoniums was how resistant they are to most greenhouse pests. Oh well.....
