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!
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