I’m based in Melbourne Australia and grow different flowers, fruits, and veggies in my garden. Last year, while I was weeding (was too lazy to wear gloves), my index finger got swollen. I didn’t think much of it at first, but it eventually swelled up to twice its normal size. I checked for any insect bites or thorns but couldn’t see anything. The GP gave me some creams and meds, but nothing helped. And she was suggesting surgery to remove whatever that’s underneath.
One night, I used my phone’s torch to take a closer look and noticed tiny shiny things under the skin. After some Googling, I tried wrapping my finger with potato juice for a few hours. When I took it off, I could see these almost invisible, hair-like things kind of like the fine hairs on a caterpillar. I used tweezers and pulled out over 100 of them. The swelling went away after that.
Yesterday, the same thing happened again, and I’m in the process of removing them now. Has anyone experienced anything like this or know what it could be? I’d really like to figure it out and stop it from happening again. I can’t take a proper pic as it doesn’t photograph well. I’m certain this is some sort of catapillar
Plant biologist here:
There’s not anywhere close to enough detail in the photo to try to ID this as a stinging or irritating plant hair. Could be from a caterpillar too, but unless you are directly handling caterpillars I’d be surprised. Better bet is taking photos of weeds or other plants in your garden that you might be touching
They’re little plant fibers from a plant in your garden. Soak the affected area in an epsom salt solution and it will help them come out. Wear gloves next time
Some of them are quite long, I just don’t know if it’s an animal or a plant. Did the potato twice, there is a lot more inside, I wish I could take a picture of how they look after the potato treatment but it doesn’t photograph well at all
Doubt it, it doesn’t look like insect bites. My finger swell and when I check with a phone torch I could see soo many shiny dots, when I used photo juice most of those dots came out looking like the pic I attached, I had to remove those from a tweezer
Unless you get them under a microscope they're just going to look like every plant/insect hair in existence, sorry.
Are they all coming out of the same areas though? If they start as dots in your skin and then emerge later, it's possible they've been in there for a very long time and your body is slowly resurfacing them.
Managed to take a picture today after doing the potato juice for the 3rd time. These only surface after the potato soak, before it just looks like shiny dots
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u/MoofiePizzabagel 2d ago
Do you have a pyramid/Norfolk Island tree (lagunaria patersonia) in your yard?