scrambled egg slime mold

Description:

Fuligo septica is a large slime mold in the order Physarales. In urbanized areas it is usually found growing on bark chips which it digests for a carbon source. Like Physarum, the plasmodium consists of a multinucleate mass of protoplasm that is not differentiated into cells. It moves like an amoeba, the protoplasm streaming internally in one direction and then in another. The yellowish, bile-colored plasmodium is the origin of the uncomplimentary name "dog vomit slime mold." The slimy plasmodium develops into a thicker, lime encrusted mass which is essentially the spore-bearing stage (fructification) called the aethalium. At the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the yellowish plasmodium transformed into a pinkish-tinged aethalium within one day. The aethalium is analogous to the spore-bearing "fruiting body" of a mushroom or toadstool, except it is much more simple and primitive in structure. It has the texture of porous bread or a thick pancake. Unlike more advanced slime fungi, the spores are not produced in distinct spore cases called sporangia. As it ages, the aethalium breaks down into dark red liquified areas which resemble blood. The dried aethalium contains literally millions of spores which are dispersed into the air ( http://waynesword.palomar.edu/slime1.htm... )

Habitat:

Scientific name: Fuligo septica (L.) Wigg. Derivation of name: Synonyms: Common name(s): Scrambled-egg slime. Phylum: Myxomycota Order: Physarales Family: Physaraceae Occurrence on wood substrate: Occurring as slimy to crust-like sheets or cushion-like iregular masses on stumps, logs, living plants, and wood mulches in landscapes; May through October. Dimensions: Masses are 2.5 to 20 cm long, almost as wide, and 1-3 cm thick. Description: This slime mold first appears as a white to yellow slimy mass with dimensions as given. The "flesh" transforms into a crusty, cake-like mass of darker and variable color. The brittle crust easily breaks away to reveal a dull-black spore mass. Edibility: Inedible. Comments: Although many slime mold species fruit on wood they do not form a penetrating and absorptive mass of hyphae in the wood substrate. Rather, slime molds form structures called plasmodia which are naked (i.e., without cell walls) masses of protoplasm which can move and engulf particles of food in an amoeboid manner. Slime mold plasmodia creep about over the surfaces of materials, engulfing bacteria, spores of fungi and plants, protozoa, and particles of nonliving organic matter. At some point, plasmodia convert into spore-bearing structures. In Fuligo, the plasmodium converts into a cushion-shaped mass of spores enclosed by an outer wall called a peridium. This structure is called an aethalium (plural: aethalia). Fuligo septica produces the largest spore-producing structure of any known slime mold ( http://www.messiah.edu/Oakes/fungi_on_wo... )

Notes:

SPORANGIA: Aethalia pulvinate, varying in size from 2 mm. to more than 30 cm., various shades of yellow in the typical form, also greenish, reddish, and brown to deep chocolate. The sporangia constituting the aethalium are intricately coiled and anastomosing, but often more or less separated in the mass, with spaces in between; cortex thick or thin, a dense crust of lime or undeveloped Plasmodium, loose or firm, or absent entirely; sporangial walls within the aethalium membranous, fragile, colourless, with scattered deposits of lime-granules. CAPILLITIUM: scanty or abundant, consisting of a loose network of slender hyaline threads, more or less expanded at the axils, with fusiform or branching lime-knots, usually white but often yellow, or occasionally reddish or brownish. NOTES: Common Names: Dog vomit slime, Scrambled egg slime, Flowers of tan SPORES: Purplish-brown smooth to minutely spiny 6 - 9 µm in diameter. PLASMODIUM: bright yellow or white. ECOLOGY: On leaf litter or on rotting logs or stumps in native bush . Also regularly appears in wood chip mulch. DISTRIBUTION: Cosmopolitan ( http://www.hiddenforest.co.nz/slime/fami... ) ------- matured/ripe round-shaped specimen and a imatured spiky one. !!