This fall we decommissioned a large wooden planter where we grew our vegies. When we emptied the planter and turned it over, we found an abundance of new and disturbing life forms living there. If anyone knows what type of fungus this might be, I’d love to know.
Here’s the bottom of the planter
and here’s a closeup of the “colony” of ???
and here’s a less disturbing picture of the inside of the planter with embedded roots and if you could see the larger size, tiny worms and snails.
you can see larger pictures of these on my flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thereallinda/sets/72157602817929775/detail/
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:57 pm
What you’ve got is a fruiting plasmodial slime mold (Myxomycota). These are really cool organisms that have historically been classified as either protists or fungi. The main body, or plasmodium, is sort of a giant bag of cytoplasm with a bunch of nuclei; the whole thing can move around like a giant amoeba. When it’s time to reproduce, they produce fruiting bodies, within which spores are produced. Those round blobs are fruiting bodies; the little black blobs, if I’m reading things correctly, are the sporangia.
Anyway, a good description can be found at Wayne’s Word: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/slime1.htm
Too cool!
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November 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
slime mold! how wonderful! and apparently, they can run mazes very efficiently. 🙂
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November 4th, 2007 at 4:43 am
fruiting plasmodial slime mold…
Who ya gonna call??? GHOST BUSTERS!
Seriously … I’m sure having your own Myxomycota plantation is not injurious to your health … as long as you don’t inhale :-))
–Barbara
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November 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 am
OK, call me weird (or call me a biologist), but I think what you found is beautiful and fascinating and not disturbing in the least. Plus, the photos are lovely in and of themselves. If you send me copies, I can run them by our ‘shroom guy and see what he thinks.
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November 2nd, 2007 at 1:45 am
i agree…they are fascinating and beautiful. if you go click on this link to my flickr page, you can download them in whatever size works for your bandwidth.
go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/thereallinda/sets/72157602817929775/detail/
and click on the picture you want. above the picture are small links, one of which says “all sizes.” click on that and you can choose which size to download.
and thanks! i can’t wait to find out what this amazing stuff was.
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November 1st, 2007 at 3:33 am
I have no idea what kind of fungus that is, but I heartily encourage you to take more photos of rotting wood. It’s one of my reliable photo subjects on my bike rides.
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November 1st, 2007 at 4:08 am
ah yes, rotted wood, broken bones, crushed stones…love them all. i saw a dead deer on the road and pulled over in hopes of getting a shot but the traffic was so horrible i couldn’t risk it. i miss a lot of shots due to ridiculous numbers of cars.
i wish i were a brave bike rider like you.
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November 1st, 2007 at 2:50 am
If tentacles begin shooting out of that colony, or killer death rays, or anything of that nature, better run away.
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October 31st, 2007 at 10:16 pm
*blinks at the close-up of the “colony”* Wow. Just…wow.
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