Summer Icicles - Ceratiomyxa

Day 270: As a lichenologist, I spend a lot of time looking at rotten stumps, broken branches and unattractive rock outcrops. I find it amazing that slime molds escaped my notice until a few years ago when I stumbled across my first specimens of Lycogala epidendrum. Its pink bubble-gum mounds were the gateway to yet another rabbit hole begging me to enter and, like Alice, I tumbled into a bizarre world populated with some of the oddest creatures I had ever seen. During voluntary isolation, I have been exploring the woods near my home in minuscule detail in the hopes of discovering vascular plants or lichens not previously recorded in the area. Not many botanists get an opportunity for intense field study such as this, to be able to spend as much time as possible in a relatively small geographic area. While exploring one particular section of no more than 1500' sq. ft., I have found four slime mold species and a handful of relatively uncommon fungi which do not seem to appear anywhere else except in that particular microecology. Among them is Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, a slime mold one might easily mistake for a fungus on first glance. What is it about this location? Is it that there is more moisture here, or that certain plant species are present? Is it because when fire swept the area it burned more or less intensely at this small spot? Was the detritus of the old forest more rich in hemlock or cedar, perhaps providing a unique chemistry which draws the slime molds to it? Why are they here? What do they want? I will probably never have answers, but as the questions arise, they feed and nourish my curiosity. One must have questions, else why bother getting out of bed?

Tubifera Ferruginosa, Raspberry Slime

Day 251: If you only knew what it takes for me to bring you these daily excursions into the marvelous realm of botany! With voluntary isolation de rigueur (at least for me), the area within walking distance of my home has become my playground. I'm taking the opportunity to explore it in depth, and by that, I mean waist-deep in ferns and prickly Oregon grape. These woods are trailless but for the short sections where deer or elk have avoided the tangle of fallen trees, walking single file for fifty yards or so, then to disperse and browse at leisure. A deer's legs are much longer than mine, and what they might step over becomes a gymnastic exercise for me, heaving myself from one side of a log to another, uncertain of what might or might not afford me a step down where I hope to find it. Nor do I go in a straight line from Point A to Point B, navigating instead on a tack port or starboard to avoid insurmountable obstacles and impenetrable thickets. I cover a lot of territory, if not any great linear distance, and it is this which keeps my ramblings interesting. That said, I decided to explore a new section of forest which in the past I have only visited in Chanterelle season (and then, only in part). I call it the "middle terrace," one of three levels between the highway and the river.

I spent the better part of two hours in examination of the middle terrace, and as the morning wore on and I had seen not a single thing worthy of a photo or botanical essay, I began to despair. When I poured myself out through a hillside of Oregon grape and landed in the maintenance area, I was seriously rethinking the need to breach the next section to try to re-find Tarzetta so I could mark it with the GPS (I'm good...I found it...a  single 10 mm white marble in acres of woods). I dived back into the woods at the Ceratiomyxa Stump, found Molly Eye-Winker's log and a nice crop of Lycogala epidendrum, and then...hang on...what's that orange bit? Right in the middle of my line of travel, dotting a decaying branch I'd stepped over less than 48 hours previously, was a slime mold. As it turns out, it's a new one for me: Tubifera ferruginosa, Raspberry Slime.

Now the interesting part of this is that while I was scouting the middle terrace, I found nothing worth note except perhaps for a common facultative mycoheterotroph, and only one specimen of it. Yet within 100 yards of the Ceratiomyxa Stump, I had four slime molds (Tubifera, Lycogala, more Ceratiomyxa and previously, Fuligo septica) plus fungus Molly. What IS it about that locale? That question will likely remain unanswered, but I do know one thing: there's no need to go back to the middle terrace until it's time for Chanterelles.