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pretzel slime mold

hemitrichia serpula

Description:

If you look closely at the fruiting body of Hemitrichia, you can see some fuzzy stuff coming from the plasmodiocarp. If you mount a bit of this fuzz, you'll see some spores embedded in a matrix of threads called the capillitium. The capillitium is often heavily ornamented, and in Hemitrichia it looks kind of like a hemp rope. The capillitium is made of lime (calcium carbonate), which makes its beauty even more amazing. The capillitium of a slime mold is thought to function as a time-release mechanism for the spores, holding them in so that they are released more slowly. Compare this to one of those scrubbers you keep in your kitchen sink-- you scrub your dishes and little bits of food get caught in it. These little pieces of food, like the spores of a slime mold, eventually get washed or blown out over a long period of time. It's probably the slime mold's way of hedging its bets about when the best time for spore release might be. ( http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/... )--> botit-botanic / tom's volk, ( http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&cp... )--> sporepicture i-net

Habitat:

-SPORANGIA: forming elongate, winding, branched plasmodiocarps, 0.4 to 0.6 mm. wide, usually uniting into a close net, golden yellow or brownish yellow, often seated on a reddish brown hypothallus. -PERIDIUM: of two layers, the outer membranous or cartilaginous, yellow, or brownish yellow from deposits of refuse matter, the inner membranous, delicately marked with a network resembling fan-tracery. -CAPILLITIUM: an elastic tangle of twisted, sparingly branched, yellow or orange threads 5-6 µm diam., marked with three or four, rarely more, regular, sinistral, spiral bands, usually spinose, rarely smooth; longitudinal striae often distinct; free ends pointed. -SPORES: Yellow, reticulate with narrow bands forming a net with from nine to twelve meshes to the hemisphere, 10 - 12 µm diam.; border 0.5 - 1 µm wide. -Plasmodium: Milky white, then yellow. -HABITAT: On dead wood. -DISTRIBUTION: Cosmopolitan ( http://hiddenforest.co.nz/slime/family/t... )--->hiddenforest , ( http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?searc... )--> discoverlife, ( http://slimemold.uark.edu/fungi/default.... )--> the eumycetozoan project

Notes:

An often easy to recognise family as the spore mass is typically brightly coloured, producing stalked or sessile sporangia. A capillitium often consisting of solid or tubular, smooth or sculptured, free or attached threadlike elements ( http://hiddenforest.co.nz/slime/family/t... )--> hiddenforest

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3 Comments

AlexKonig
AlexKonig 12 years ago

added to: Myxomycetes (Slime Moulds) of the World - mission

AlexKonig
AlexKonig 12 years ago

thanks you 2. on youtube are also nice timelaps of slime molds. And some nice documentation (sadly for you guys in german-language). Thanks agrybee,like your warm comments,feel free to comment on my spotting more often.

Mark Ridgway
Mark Ridgway 12 years ago

Fascinating spot Alex and good vid link Clive. Thanks.

AlexKonig
Spotted by
AlexKonig

Horst aan de Maas, Limburg, Netherlands

Spotted on Dec 18, 2011
Submitted on Jan 7, 2012

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