One of the fun things about looking for mushrooms is that often in the process you will find and learn about something else. Maybe it’s trees, or insects, or mosses…or slime molds. Many is the time I’ve bent down to look at a spot of color on a log to discover strange globs, blobs, fuzzes, and splats of color. They’re not quite fungi, but what else could they be?
To go back to a bit of simplified High School biology, there are five kingdoms of life: plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and…Protista. The most well known Protists are probably algae, kelp, and amoebas. It’s hard to say what really defines this kingdom except that they don’t fit anywhere else. Slime molds are single-celled organisms somewhat like amoebas which aggregate for purposes of reproduction, but spend most of their time “crawling” around on logs or the forest floor enveloping and eating microorganisms like bacteria or fungi.
Earlier this year I saw what I will tentatively identify as Dog Vomit Slime Mold, an almost neon-yellow splat of color on wet wood.
More recently, however, I’ve been seeing one of a genus of species known as “Chocolate Tube Slime Molds.” My first thought, before I learned the accepted name, was that they looked like little tufts of brown carpet. They are fun to find because when you touch them, a brown powdery dust is released, kind of like puffballs. Based on my experience, they seem to be unlike most fungi in that they like dry weather for spore dispersal. The past couple weeks have seen almost no rain, and for about the past week I’ve seen Chocolate Tube Slime molds on almost every hike.
I don’t know if there are slime mold hunters, as there are mushroom hunters, but if so they must be a pretty dedicated lot! For more info on slime molds check out: http://website.nbm-mnb.ca/mycologywebpages/NaturalHistoryOfFungi/SlimeMoulds.html and http://www.bucksfungusgroup.org.uk/articles.html#slimemould
recycled paper clips 