Graveyard of Aphids

At some point, the flow­er­ing cab­bage plant Heather gave me started to shed. The top leaves remained sup­ple and fresh, while the bot­tom leaves would dry up and fall off. I couldn’t fig­ure out why. I liked the look any­way, to see this plant grow­ing out of the decay it cast around itself, so I didn’t worry too much.

I wasn’t used to hav­ing a plant that was so alive. It had a pun­gent smell, and I noticed a few insects on it here and there. I thought the insects were a good thing, cause that meant the plant was healthy enough to sup­port other life.

When I watered the plant, I noticed the water would bead on the dead leaves, as if it refused to accept life in it again.

One day, the main trunk wilted and bent over. It com­pletely col­lapsed and wouldn’t stand upright again.

It turns out the insects were aphids. They started out as maybe a half dozen I could see walk­ing around on the leaves. I tried to change loca­tions, alter the amount of sun­light, and use a dif­fer­ent water source, but noth­ing would resus­ci­tate the fallen plant.

So I decided to leave it for a few weeks.

Then the aphids died off too. I won­der if it was because they can­ni­bal­ized the plant, or because I wasn’t able to keep the plant alive, with them los­ing their pri­mary food source in either case.

Eventually, there was a mass grave­yard of tiny aphid bod­ies around the plant, along with what may have been their drop­pings, their eggs, or both.

Aphids are usu­ally a pale yellow-green. But I dis­cov­ered that when they die, they lose their colour­ings, as if the pig­ment in their bod­ies fade when the souls leave these hol­lowed shells.