Hi, Thank you for your replies, which gave me some interesting things to do a Google image search for. To the naked eye these grubs are quite matt, dark brown to black. This made me think they were dead, but they moved. The flash on my camera gave them a translucent appearance. I have non-flash photos if anyone is interested. They don't have appendages, which many of the larvae I looked at on the web do. Having failed to find anything that looks quite like this, yes it would have been interesting to seal them in a bag and see what came out (plot of horror film). I'm not inclined to retrieve them from my 'green waste bin' even for science. As well as the suggestions above, I also looked on Google for the common insects I see around, centipedes, wood lice. Unlike vine weevil (which is the chief reason I was picking my way through pots of lily bulbs) these are not common. -- David Pilling email: david@pilling.demon.co.uk web: http://www.davidpilling.net/