Day 230: Yesterday was a pretty exciting day. Not only did I find two nice colonies of the common slime mold Lycogala epidendrum (tomorrow's post), but I found one totally unfamiliar to me: Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. poroides. I have a slime mold expert to thank for the identification, a bit to my embarrassment because when I posted an earlier photo to a slime-mold identification group and identified it as Lycogala, I was referring to the single orange blob in a sea of white, dismissing the second larger organism as a phase of Lycogala. He "corrected" me, later admitting that he hadn't even noticed the orange blob. In any event, we got it sorted out and I am happy to present Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. poroides in all its beautiful glory. Had I not been prowling in a trailless section of forest at this specific point in time, i.e., had I come a day earlier or later, I could not have witnesses this plasmodial phase which lasts roughly 24 hours.
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