Slime Mould Problems

The slime moulds are thoroughly enjoying our cool damp weather and, like the fungi, the more we look the more varieties we find; and, as with the fungi, the more I struggle to identify them.

This is one of my successes, maybe. I think it's wolf's milk slime, a strange name whose origins seem to have been lost but have something to do with a liquid which is expressed by the mould at some point in its complex life cycle, while....

....this is lead shot slime, for very obvious reasons. The wolf's milk and lead shot were growing close together on the same rotten log.

These jelly-like globules are tiny, no more than 5mm across, and I'm guessing that they are slime moulds as I haven't been able to identify them. Part of the trouble is that studying slime moulds isn't everyone's cup of tea, so there are relatively few sites that are helpful.

I didn't stand a chance with these ones, looking very comfortable on a bed of moss. Again, they're small - the biggest, in the centre, being about 15mm across - but size isn't everything as....

....these are much larger, the tree on which they're growing being about two foot in diameter, so they should be easy to identify, particularly as they look just like bits of lamb's fleece: but I've failed.

This slime mould we'd come across before. Several patches of it are growing on the school playing field opposite our house, some a pale yellow, others white. It's dog vomit or scrambled egg slime mould, Fuligo septica, and we're finding it all over the place.

This is another identification failure. It looks like a coral or stagshorn fungus but it's much smaller.  It probably helps if the photographs are exceptionally good, which mine obviously aren't so, if you're interested in some very good pictures of this tiny, mouldy world take a look at Barry Webb's site here ....but also see his fungi photos here