Wolf's Milk

I’m a bit frustrated with this one, as last week some alien looking pink/orange blobs looking like melted plastic appeared on a stump of dead wood. They didn’t look right for Coral Spot Fungus, at >1 cm across too big for sure, but thinking I had time I didn’t get a decent photo or check it out properly, and a couple of days later when I had time the orange was gone replaced by these brown spheres. After due research, it turns out that my fungus was in fact a slime mould, Wolf’s Milk (Lycogala terrestre), which is found on dead timber mostly from June through to November. It is sometimes called Toothpaste Slime, because when you puncture the orange blob fruiting body and squeeze a little toothpaste-like orange slime comes out; something I also missed the the opportunity to try…

#626 Wolf's Milk Slime Mould (Lycogala terrestre)

A First Slime Mould

Clearing away some leaf litter at the weekend, I found this dead leaf from the Beech tree covered in a neat pattern of white spots. Not a fungus, it turns out, but a slime mould. I couldn’t really find one looking quite like this on-line, so I didn’t yet work out the species, which anyway appears difficult, so it goes down as “Myxomycetes sp”,

These slime moulds are single celled animals, that cluster together and reproduce by forming these while spherical fruiting bodies, which ultimately release spores into the air. Surprisingly slime moulds are not static, but slowly move around in a search for food; apparently even being able to traverse mazes in pursuit of a suitable meal.