UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Burnaby, BC
Posts: 6,929
Re: Are these beauties fungi?
Oo la la!
I'm thinking it is a slime mold, as it seems to be growing on the surface of the substrate. As to which one, there are books in the library at work. Will check tomorrow.
Daniel, I never thought of slime mold. Thanks to your tip I did a new search and discovered that slime mold used to be classified as fungi, but no longer.
Here's what I found on the internet -
The slime mold in my pics are probably of the myxomycetes class, perhaps in the didymium genus.
The one thing I can't find out is the proper way to spell slime mold. I've seen it spelled slime mold, and slime mould.
Here are some cool pictures I found of slime molds
Slime Mold that look similar to the ones in my pics -
UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Burnaby, BC
Posts: 6,929
Re: Are these beauties fungi?
Yep, I'd agree with your identification of Didymium. The resources you've assembled here are great, by the way. Slime molds are awesome, one of my favourite groups of organisms -- rarely encountered, ephemeral and an interesting biology.
First picture - shows what the same slime mold looked like this afternoon, after it rained overnight.
Second & Third pictures - show how the same slime mold looked yesterday, as originally shown in my first post above (the third picture has been correctively rotated).
EXCELLENT! What great images and information. I LOVE slime molds!
I wish there were more books with images as great as you have taken here to help ID these amazing living things.
Thanks C. Wick. And I love your enthusiasm. I got lucky with the photos - spotting the white dots on the moss was serendipity. I'm going to pay more attention to the wee things growing around here.
Now, if only I can figure out how make sharper images with the digital camera :)
UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Burnaby, BC
Posts: 6,929
Re: Are these beauties fungi?
Thanks to the efforts of miss myxo, who contacted a slime mould expert in England, there's now an identification:
Quote:
I came across your web-page and can supply the name of the slime-mould illustrated (on moss). It is certainly a species of the genus Physarum and very likely to be Physarum album (also previously called Physarum nutans).
A useful reference is Bruce Ing's book-THE MYXOMYCETES OF BRITAIN & IRELAND, (ISBN 085546 251 5) is a 1999 publication by Richmond Publ. Co. Ltd.
There are over a thousand images of Slime-moulds to be found on the ZipCode Zoo web-site.
