Slime mold sporangia (spore capsules) broken open and laid bare to the wind as nature intended. A few unopened capsules are on the left. Photo courtesy Mary Jane Howell.
At last, two actual slime molds! As hard as I searched, the best I could find were plenty of tiny white-spored objects (fungi) erupting from the wood. I learned slime mold spores tend not to be white. : ( But local slime mold expert Mary Jane Howell’s sharp eyes picked out two (not so slimy) slimes. One, a Stemonitis, often called “hair growing on wood” because of their long spore-making sacs called sporangia, had lost most of its spores and was fairly unexciting. Only the hairnet-like frame of the sporangium was left, and even that was a bit disarrayed.
But another, Perichaena corticalis (top photo), still showed the bottom half of its spherical spore capsules and a thin veneer of yellow spore dust.
I also learned there is a certain age of fallen log that is ideal for slimes — bark starting to come off, but not all off, and that looking underneath the log or bark can also bear fruit. To review, plasmodial slime molds start out as spores that hatch into amoebae or flagellated swimming swarm cells. The amoebae crawl around for a while feeding on bacteria and other microorganisms in the soil until they run into a mate.
After they fuse, they eventually start pumping out nuclei and more cytoplasm like crazy but everything stays in one big bag — the plasmodium — that crawls around until things dry out. They then produce the fruiting body, of which the spheres of Perichaena above are one form. When those dry out and crack open, the spores are distributed by the wind.
Fungi and slime molds aren’t the only thing I look for when I’m out. I also pay attention to lichens and plants, which have the indisputable advantage of being much more abundant and much less dependent on recent rain for viewing. I found a new (to me) species of bog or rein orchid (Platanthera sp.), pixie sticks and pixie cups (lichens, probably Cladonia sp.), and everywhere the jewel-like fiery red pendant berries of clasped-leaved twisted-stalk (Streptopus amplexifolius) of the lily family. Lilies are monocots, one of two major flowering plant divisions. These plants tend to have parallel veins and flower parts in threes — if you click on the link, notice the leaves with parallel veins and 6-petaled (tepaled, actually) flowers hanging from their twisted stalks.
Finally, we found, in turning over damp branches, several of these tiny snails. As you can see, they are plenty slimy, and plenty cute.
Do we have any invert experts here who can ID them? Here ends the tale of the slime mold hunt!
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Just remember to blur out any psuedopods during the mating bit. Think of the children!