Swirly rainbow all the way... what does it mean?

[Howabominable]

So I was gardening for the 10 millionth time when I noticed a swirly rainbow thing over one of my plants. Here's a picture, though it does not quite convey the swirliness or the rainbowness. What does it mean?

My lot is completely gated off, so I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with pets or unicorns. Aint no unicorn getting anywhere near this stuff.

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/209/screenshot36eu.jpg

It's kind of similar to the dot you get when a sim plays a prank, but it isn't red, and as far as I can tell no sim has pranked this plant. I mean, what would he do to it?

[simsample]

Is it a plasma fruit plant? The seeds for that glow red.

[Zokugai]

Doesn't look like it.

I recommend waiting for it to grow and finding out. Maybe planted life fruit glows before it sprouts and nobody noticed.

[eskie227]

I've seen that associated with life fruit, although I believe it's a glitch, and not a deliberate visual effect.

[babele44]

It does look like the visual effect that is attached to a life fruit and maybe it is a remnant of some life fruit that used to be at that place, i.e., when you planted it.
During the last weeks I noticed that quite some visual effects now have a tendency to detach from their objects and remain in game even though the object is not in that place anymore. Like when I go back to my home lot the swirly cloud that surrounds a genie's legs during some of their idle animations is still hovering in the kitchen while the genie is already in the park or when the insects at a spawn site have been replaced by a new kind of insect but the visual effect of the former, that is the crawling beetle, is still visible but cannot be clicked as the object itself is gone.
Might be a mod that causes this wonky clean-up of effects, but I haven't fully tested it yet.

[Zokugai]

Have you ever had the foaming effect on a sink last after you turned the sink off? It's probably something like that.

[babele44]

Have you ever had the foaming effect on a sink last after you turned the sink off? It's probably something like that.Yes, but this usually goes away after a while. The genie cloud went, too, but the insects remained for the whole play session until the next time I reloaded.
At first I thought that maybe ErrorTrap had deleted the jig (the actual insect object) by accident and left the animated effect as an empty reference but I kept a watch on one of the spawn sites and noticed that it happens during the nightly transition from regular insect to firefly and again during the day when fireflies are replaced by regular insects: the jig is replaced but the visible insects stay, so I have firefly effects during the day and fluttering butterflies during the night.
It reminds me a bit of the Abomb bug in Oblivion when after extended play the visual effects wouldn't disappear anymore. Funny when you came back to a place and found the fireballs you cast last time still hovering in the air. Less funny when you discover then that casting another fireball will also remain in place and add to the others. Bye bye to a 500 days stay in Tamriel.

[Zokugai]

Uhm. I was talking about the plant.

[babele44]

Uhm. I was talking about the plant.Oops. Sorry for the misunderstanding then.

[Howabominable]

It is a life plant, so I'm guessing that's it. I've seen it before in the past, but never figured out what it meant.