Gardener Disgusted by Weird Green Jelly on Their Lawn — Turns Out, It Was Older Than Dinosaurs

About a month ago, Reddit user u/Iwontturnitdown shared some inconspicuous pictures of their garden, asking people what it could be. Sitting like globs of bubbly gunge, a strange greenish jelly was splattered on their lawn, as if someone spread a yucky version of jam on the grassy bedspread. Another gardener shared that they had to cut down a sparkleberry tree in their driveway because a similar green jelly invaded the grass at the bottom.

At first glance, it resembles a sickening glitter glue. But it’s not. It’s a living organism. Here’s a catch: it’s 3.5 billion years old, which means, even older than the dinosaurs who existed around 66 million years ago. This ugly-pugly organism of many names is believed to have fallen from the dust of shooting stars. Here on Earth, it thrives in the wet. Although it is dubbed as “Nostoc,” “N Commune,” or “Nc” by scientists, people across the world call it “Primordial ooze.” Eww!

What is Nostoc?

Clary Gardens defines it as a “non-toxic, gelatinous colony of microscopic bacterial filaments.” As strange as its appearance, its nicknames are weird too, such as star slime, star jelly, star-shot, and witch’s butter, according to the Turf Gras Group. It is hard to believe that this gooey organism could be made of the same material as stars, but studies have confirmed that it is an ancestor of cyanobacteria, the ancient bacteria that released oxygen on Earth for the first time, triggering the creation of life. “I periodically remind myself that we only exist because we can breathe their toxic waste,” said Reddit user u/TwoAlert3448. Although sometimes Nc is referred to as “blue-green algae,” technically speaking, it is not algae.

Nobody likes it, but Nc is as innocent as a cow. It won’t cause any damage to your lawn, garden, trees, or plants unless they are waterlogged. But if there are conditions in your garden that endorse a wet environment, then don’t be surprised to wake up one morning and discover that your grass has suddenly turned slippery. Don’t fret: If you end up stumbling down and splashing your face in this green gloopy thing, it won’t kill you. It is non-toxic, both to your turf grass and to you. All it needs is an environment to breed. It doesn’t have roots of its own where it could store water or nutrients. It just exists by feeding on the water its surroundings provide.

Where does it live?

From the polar point of the Arctic to even the most inhospitable terrains on planet Earth, it can survive anywhere and everywhere. Take freshwater, saltwater, and terrestrial habitats. In homes and gardens, Nc thrives in moisture and damp conditions. But as Joe Boggs, an assistant professor with Ohio State University Extension, wrote in a university blog post, it can also survive heat and dry conditions. Usually when it spumes out of nowhere, it is greenish in color, but if the conditions remain dry for a prolonged period, it can take a crusty texture that’d resemble black-colored mucous.

How to get rid of Nc?

Given that it has withstood a wide range of environmental conditions over the past 3.5 billion years, it should not come as a surprise that it is hard to kill. Take the case of the gardener who had to chop down their sparkleberry tree. Nc had left them with no choice, if at all. So, although there is no surefire technique to strip away the gunky Nc mats from your grass, Boggs says some chemicals like algaecides and herbicidal soaps could help kill them.

Although it doesn’t have its own nutrients, it can trap nitrogen and phosphorus from the air and then steal the Sun’s light energy to fuel itself with energy. Therefore, the only way to get rid of them is to change the conditions of your garden so they are not suitable for Nc to survive. After learning these facts, people might see Nc as a dastardly, stomach-churning, disgusting thing, but people in Asia and South America regularly consume it as food. Plus, various Chinese and Western doctors use its properties to make folk medicines, nutritional supplements, and medicinal chemicals, as u/NotAlwaysGifs shared.

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