365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Lycogala Epidendrum, Wolf's-Milk Slime Mold
Day 234: We put up the platform tents in Longmire Campground last Saturday, and Kevin wanted to make a time-exposure video of the process. He started to set his cell phone down on a stump, but discovered it was occupied. As I walked down the road, he said, "Come with me. I have something to show you." He pointed at a group of salmon-orange bumps and asked, "Are they a lichen or a fungus?" I replied with a laugh, "Neither! That's a slime mold." In fact, it was Lycogala epidendrum, also known (for some bizarre reason) as "Wolf's-milk" which, as slime molds go, is one of the most common species worldwide. I know of two locations where it occurs in Longmire now, this being the second one.
As a species, Lycogala was first classified by Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy. He called it "Lycoperdon" because he thought it was a puffball mushroom. We now know that it isn't a fungus at all, but a unique lifeform which some felt necessitated recognition of a separate biological kingdom, the Protists/Protoctista. At the time of this writing, this classification is considered obsolete, and further parsing of kingdoms is the subject of on-going research. Slime molds might well be the puzzle of the century!
Labels:
Longmire,
Lycogala epidendrum,
MORA,
taxonomy,
Wolf's-Milk Slime Mold
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