Long shot for a plant ID?

[Deleted2797112]

I've just taken out two leylandii. Didn't think I could handle a stump grinder so followed the advice here (thanks all!) and did it the hard way with spade, bow saw and axe.

Underneath one of them in the soil, I found what I thought at first was just a trunk that had died back but on closer inspection is a large corm with lots of offsets. This is a new garden for me so this season I just let everything do its own thing so that I could see what was where and I'm pretty sure this corm did nothing, but the leylandii foliage went right down to ground level so the corm had zero light buried under there. It appears to me to be alive still.

The largest one is more than my hand span across (around 8" ish) and the rest are all sizes down to marbles. They're reddish brown on the outside, with a few fibrous roots but some big roots (1" diameter) underneath which I had to sever.

The only things I can think of are cyclamen or maybe peony? The soil is acid if that helps. I've stuck them in a pot of compost for now until I decide what to do with them. Can anyone ID them please?

Many thanks as usual!

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[Srodders]

look like root galls to me - part of the leylandii root system

 

[Deleted2797112]

Thanks! That's interesting, I hadn't thought of galls. I've tried googling to find something specific to leylandii galls but come up blank. The lump appeared to me not to be attached to the leylandii and the roots look quite different. There's an ornamental cherry pretty close by and I'm wondering if it's a gall if it might be from that. The roots look a bit more similar and where I had to sever them was on the side towards the cherry. Hmmm!

 

[Srodders]

It makes more sense that they are from a cherry, quite common with those.