Quote:
Originally Posted by SparklySarah  I'm guessing this is a fungi of some sort but I may be wrong. It has a really weird texture and looks (and feels) like a cross between seaweed and spinach. It covered quite a large area of the roman remains we were visiting at Caerwent. The ground there in the "rooms" was basically just gravel I think. My archaeology group would like to know what it was  Sorry about the quality of the photos, only had my phone.  
Thanks! xxx |
hello oh sparkly one . . .
not a fungus - though this is as good a place as any to post it . . .
the second thought one might have (as did you with your mention of seaweed) is an alga - and you would (technically) be wrong again
because this is
Nostoc, a blue-green bacterium (often incorrectly called a blue-green alga); the cell structure of bacteria is fundamentally different from that of algae - and indeed fungi, plants and animals; we should never forget that the bacteria run this planet - to quote from Wikipedia:
"
Bacteria are ubiquitous in every habitat on Earth, growing in soil, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, water, and deep in the Earth's crust, as well as in organic matter and the live bodies of plants and animals. There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water; in all, there are approximately five nonillion (5 times 10 to the 30th!) bacteria on Earth, forming much of the world's biomass"
blue-greens have been on the planet for at least 2.2 billion years and probably more! It is now thought that the chloroplasts in vascular plants and algae were originally blue-greens living in those cells . . .
Nostoc when dry is virtually invisible to the naked eye, but after rain it swells up and becomes very obvious; so in the past it was thought to have come from the sky hence the folk-name "star-jelly"
; I note you are in Wales? in Welsh the name is
pwdre sêr, or "rot of the stars"
it seems to like calcareous substrates in my experience - if you check a few threads back you will see an example; I have found it on sites of demolished buildings:
so your archaeological site would fit nicely, finally -and to close what must seem dangerously like a lecture
- there is a direct link to fungi with cyanobacteria - they form the photobiont (photosynthesising) part of several lichen genera including the well-known
Peltigera and
Collema which can often occur in old lawns and which are much more obvious in damp weather
over and out!
best
Chris
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