What are these disgusting things in my dracaena?

I bought a little pot of dracaena fragrans in, I guess, Home Depot a couple of months ago. When I got it home and went to repot it, it separated neatly into three little plants, which I potted individually.

One died within a week or two.

One is flourishing.

I was looking at the third one this morning, which looked like it was sickly, and the leaves were turning brown from the bottom up. I saw some tiny white pebble on top of the soil, and went to pick them up. And they POPPED. Not nice. They were (the whole mess immediately went down the compactor) white globes, about the size of a grain of pepper.

There were probably more than I saw at first glance, because I didn't feel like digging through the soil.

What were these ugly things?

Sounds like little eggs from some critter or something if they popped. When you popped them was there anything inside, any liquid or anything? I remember years ago there was some loose stuff on the soil of one of my pots and I just thought it was perlite .... well, when I picked some up, some was perlite but one popped open from my gloves squeezing and there was a perfectly formed teensy baby lizard .... dead of course. I felt so bad. We have chameleons, or rather anole lizards all over outside - they are good things ..... they eat bugs. I had to give the little baby a proper burial - now I am real careful when I see perlite looking stuff on the top of soil or around plants! I just let it be hoping it is more baby lizards that will hatch.

Yes. A little milky liquid. Yukkky.

I was going to say that it may have been slow release fertilizer - but then I read 'they popped'!! EWWW!!

Could have even been the type of eggs that Lin found before, since it's most likely the plants were shipped up from Florida.

Lin, how did you bury a fetal lizard that tiny?

Had an anole in a plaant shipped to me from a nursery in Florida once.....got a frog in a bromeliad from NC once - Surprise!

LOL Nan ... We have some invasive cuban tree frogs that are migrating north from South Florida .... unfortunately! They are eating the native lizards and small tree frogs :( They have found them as far north as S. Georgia! Hopefully you won't find any of those in plants shipped from Florida! A year or so ago I found an article on the University of Florida web site telling how to humanely euthanize the cuban tree frogs!

The poor little baby lizard was buried in the houseplant pot the egg was in. I said a little prayer ..... felt so bad that I was the cause of the demise of the little guy. I don't pop little white beady things I find in plants anymore! If it's perlite that's okay and if it's little lizard eggs I want them to hatch those little babies so they can eat the bugs! I've seen the anole lizards eat everything from ants to spiders to palmetto bugs (which are those huge roaches that live in palm trees down here)! I hate bugs so I really love having these lizards all over! I rescue them from my cats all the time during the summer! Once I really thought one was dead when I got it out of the cat's mouth. I held it in my hand and it didn't move ... usually they are in a big hurry to get away! I petted it's back for a few minutes and sure enough it started breathing and was a bit groggy, but it finally started squirming more and more so I sat it on the brick wall and within a few minutes it took off! Guess it was kinda like little lizard CPR ... without the mouth to mouth breathing! :)

Well, that frog jumped right outta the plant when I pulled it out of the box here at work, and right behind a very old and very full (meaning not movable) filing cabinet that had been here for years - so I couldn't find him....never did find him.

The lizard I researched, took home, bought him baby food and everything......he stayed in his new aquarium home about 2 weeks, then we discovered he was gone one morning, too. ???

The frog probably croaked ..... hee hee .... I couldn't resist!

Lizards can fit through tiny openings sometimes so I bet he squeezed out of the aquarium and took up residence in plants or something. I have no idea what the life expectancy is of those critters.

I guess that's about all I need to know, especially considering that I threw the whole mess out. Anyway, I wouldn't have too much hope for any little lizards running around Manhattan.

Still don't understand how two of the three, from the same pot, could be infected, or infested, and the third one, same media, same windowsill, looks like something from a garden catalogue.

Thanks, all.

It could have been some "nasty" thing in your plants and it was a good thing you disposed of those with all those white pellets. I wonder if it could have been spider eggs? If there were lots of them I doubt if it was any little lizard .... I usually only find one in a pot here and there.