Help with a slime mould

[RobSutton]

Hi folks

Anyone help me out with this rather striking thing. I'm assuming it's a slime mould, does anyone know which one? Growing a well rotted log of either beech or sycamore at Malham Tarn NNR. Biggest clump about 10cm across.





Thanks in advance.

[CapAndBracket]

I would thing it's most likely Lycoperdon enteridium and will look like the one
above tommorow (if the photo was taken today).
Another option size wise is Tubifera.sp, but the structure dosn't look quite
right (i.e. that is close packed tubes).

Cheers J.P.

[RobSutton]

Thanks J.P. - I will go and check tomorrow, luckily it's at work so keeping an eye on it shouldn't be a problem.

[Steve Wurzel]

I don't know how you ID Enteridium lycoperdon in it's young "Caca de luna" state as distinct from other young mold, but I'm fairly keen to try to deep fry some, mexican style, but you need to be quick to catch it in the young stage

[CapAndBracket]

Originally Posted by Steve Wurzel

I don't know how you ID Enteridium lycoperdon in it's young "Caca de luna" state as distinct from other young mold, but I'm fairly keen to try to deep fry some, mexican style, but you need to be quick to catch it in the young stage

I did say most likely Enteridium lycoperdon based on size colour surface
texture, but there are alternatives and i was hopeing for an update photo
to confirm or learn from.

Maybe i miss-understand, but i thougth "caca de luna" was refering to
Fuligo septica, See Tom volk's page on the net, and would be collected
in the plasmodial stage. (maybe the photo is a fuligo.sp, i havn't seen one
that white but can learn from being wrong).

Cheers J.P.

[Steve Wurzel]

Originally Posted by CapAndBracket

Maybe i miss-understand, but i thougth "caca de luna" was refering to
Fuligo septica, See Tom volk's page on the net, and would be collected
in the plasmodial stage. (maybe the photo is a fuligo.sp, i havn't seen one
that white but can learn from being wrong).

Cheers J.P.

Apparantly the "Moons' Excrement" label is applied to both according to this rough translation from the German..

Plasmodia of Fuligo septica and Aethalia of Enteridium lycoperdon in the area of Veracruz in Mexico. There are grilled, under the name "caca de luna," as a delicacy.

Schleimpilze – Wikipedia

Although they grill it in that version!!

[CapAndBracket]

Well thank's, that's completely new to me.

Cheers J.P.

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by CapAndBracket

I did say most likely Enteridium lycoperdon based on size colour surface
texture, but there are alternatives and i was hopeing for an update photo
to confirm or learn from.


Cheers J.P.

Up-date photo of the thing I posted yesterday



As always any help is very much appreciated.

[CapAndBracket]

Excellent, nice to get a ripe shot for comparison, this certainly looks like
Enteridium lycoperdon, Fuligo.sp tend to have a granular surface (not unlike
breadcrumbs) and generally yellow to red colour. They can be much larger
(see woodchip watch thread recent posts).

So you now have a ripe fruit body which you could remove with a knife and
keep, but if you drop it once dry the cloud of spores will be something to
sneeze at. some one may like to do the maths for your size of 10cm by i
gess a couple of cm deep, delete a third of the area for internal supporting
structure (psuedo-capillitium), divide by size of spores which will occupy
the rest of interal area, (spore average size 8um (from:Stephenson and
Stempen). A large number

Cheers J.P.

[CapAndBracket]

A fresh Fuligo septica this morning (one of three), they are just appearing day after day, no fresh woodchip tipped in over a week but still they are only appearing on recent material. Hope this is useful as
comparison.

Cheers J.P.