A strange one ...

[jezlee]

Hello all - i went into my garden shed this morning to get out the lawn mower and found this (see pic below). It was on the outside of an unopened plastic bag of bark chips which I had bought earlier in the summer and never opened. You can see one of the holes which were pre-cut in the plastic when you buy the bag in the middle of whatever it is. Could this be some sort of fungus which has erupted through the holes in the plastic bag?

There was another specimen on the other side of the bag and another pile on the floor where it had slid down the bag.

[Chris Yeates]

this looks very like a slime-mould (and on therefore not a fungus at all); slime moulds are colonial and have the ability to move, so you can often find them fruiting on metal, plastic etc. - they haven't been feeding on those substrates, they just provide the slime-mould with a useful 'base' on which to fruit

those vein-like traces towards the left of your photo are characteristic - though I must say I have seen myxo's in better shape than this!

cheers

Chris

PS - totally harmless (to you or your woodchip) they generally feed in amoeboid fashion on bacteria

[jezlee]

Originally Posted by Chris Yeates

this looks very like a slime-mould (and on therefore not a fungus at all); slime moulds are colonial and have the ability to move, so you can often find them fruiting on metal, plastic etc. - they haven't been feeding on those substrates, they just provide the slime-mould with a useful 'base' on which to fruit

those vein-like traces towards the left of your photo are characteristic - though I must say I have seen myxo's in better shape than this!

cheers

Chris

PS - totally harmless (to you or your woodchip) they generally feed in amoeboid fashion on bacteria

Thanks, Chris, for your input - I had a sneaky feeling it might be one of those "slime-moulds", which is actually quite a good description of them ... yuk!