Hi,
I’m disappointed in the number of slime-mold observations reported in my area. I would like to find more. I have found a few, like the “many headed slime mold” in my terrarium. How would I go about locating them? Is there a method?
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Go look at well rotted logs on wet days.
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In Britain, piles of fresh wood chips commonly develop slime moulds on the surface. By fresh, I mean it will be a few weeks or months after they were chipped.
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On a humid day this summer, we walked in friends’ woods where they had plenty of fallen/rotted logs, expecting to find a slime mold. We found a likely patch, and it was on the end of the log in the very most humid place- jutting out over a spring down a hill, so that to get down to it you would have to stand on the crumbling bank and fall into the spring. No photos that time! ;)
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I read this forum thread on the train home tonight, then looked out the window and realized everything was wet and so decided to walk to a small woods and look for slime molds as well. It was a few more miles to those woods than I had remembered and the sun went down before I reached them, but there was some fallen logs along the trail and I searched them with my phone flashlight - and some of them had strange gray balls on them - according to the CV those are indeed slime molds!
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The fruiting bodies of slime molds are very transitory. Many will be visible for less than two days. I find the first few wet days of fall and warmish winter/spring days to be the most productive.
Finding them can be difficult. Identifying them can be even harder. It helps if you know an expert with good microscopy skills. Collect specimens with mature fruiting bodies and send them to your new friend.
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I think that is a species of Lycogala. They are one of the easier slime molds to spot since they are reasonably large.
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How? They disintegrate so easily.
I take a bit of the substrate they are growing on and carefully place it into a small container.
Pick up some small centrifuge tubes for cheap and store them there. Its what i do for tiny fungi
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I usually look under larger logs ( especially the ones that are brittle and rotting). Unfortunately almost all of my slime mold observations have the camera quality of a rustic potato :(
Honestly I usually just find slime molds when I’m looking for mushrooms. Sometimes I don’t even notice them until I’m going through my camera, like here
I noticed this Metatrichia vesparia just hanging out with the Scutellina way after the fact - tiny mushrooms with an even tinier slime
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thank you for the responses.
Here in the high desert it’s harder to find them but I grew this one from soil (with wood) gathered here. It is one of the “many headed” slimemolds and appears to have a heartbeat in time-lapse. Eventually it will stop migrating and turn into a bunch of black balls.
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