Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
These glassy, branching fingers, each only a few millimetres tall, are the fruiting stage of coral slime mould. They appear on damp, rotting wood after rain, often covering a patch in a frost-like crust, and last only a day or two before they wither away.
Like other slime moulds, it is not a fungus. For most of its life, it lives hidden inside decaying wood as a moving, feeding mass, grazing on bacteria and other microbes. When conditions are right, it flows to the surface and rises into these delicate columns.
It differs from most slime moulds in one striking way. Rather than producing spores inside closed cases, it carries them on the outside of its branches, each on a microscopic stalk, so the whole structure becomes covered in a fine bloom of spores. Because of this, scientists place it in a group of its own, apart from the other slime moulds.
In the deadwood of young woodland on former colliery land, it is one of the most ephemeral sights of all, a reminder of the hidden life that helps return fallen timber to the soil.
These glassy, branching fingers, each only a few millimetres tall, are the fruiting stage of coral slime mould. They appear on damp, rotting wood after rain, often covering a patch in a frost-like crust, and last only a day or two before they wither away.
Like other slime moulds, it is not a fungus. For most of its life, it lives hidden inside decaying wood as a moving, feeding mass, grazing on bacteria and other microbes. When conditions are right, it flows to the surface and rises into these delicate columns.
It differs from most slime moulds in one striking way. Rather than producing spores inside closed cases, it carries them on the outside of its branches, each on a microscopic stalk, so the whole structure becomes covered in a fine bloom of spores. Because of this, scientists place it in a group of its own, apart from the other slime moulds.
In the deadwood of young woodland on former colliery land, it is one of the most ephemeral sights of all, a reminder of the hidden life that helps return fallen timber to the soil.