I was giving my friend Mary a garden tour the other day, which always puffs me up a little, inasmuch as I know a lot of the names of the plants in case anyone asks; and instead of asking, Mary pointed excitedly at a blob I do not remember planting and said it looked like I had a slime mold! And since I am in possession of a tattered, vestigial Biology degree, I made mumbly noises in the affirmative, although I had not personally ruled out that it was some sort of excreta from an unwell animal.
Really, the only polite thing to say when someone points out a slime mold is “How about that,” when you really mean “Eww.” And as often as I’ve seen one, I’ve never had much of a grip on what it actually is, or what it does for a living. Or who it does for a living.
A slime mold, it turns out, is a member of the Protista kingdom. In more innocent times it was called Protoctista, not to be confused with proctocyst, which is something you don’t want in a place you don’t want it. The experts changed the name to Protista in much the same way terms for undervalued groups of people have to keep changing over the years once the new term acquires the purported stain of the old. Meaning, whatever you want to call it—it’s still a slime mold.
That’s just one protist. Others include bacteria and algae and even kelp. Protista comes from the Latin for “Who the hell knows,” out of the Greek for “None of the above.” A protist is any organism whose cells contain distinct, membrane-bound nuclei but is not a plant, animal, or fungus. Generally speaking, protists consist of one cell. Kelp is multicellular but is considered too simple-minded to qualify as a plant, and is chiefly employed keeping snoozing otters from drifting off to sea.
“Otter snooze,” by the way, is not a thing, but if it were, it would probably be the name of a slime mold. Others include the famous Dog Vomit slime mold, Fuligo septica, after the Latin for “putrid soot,” and also known as Feces of the Moon and, in Norway, Troll Cat Puke. (A troll cat is an associate of a witch that sucks milk out of cows and spits it in the witch’s pail, before going inside and licking up cream. It’s hard to see how such an entity got any traction in a culture, but one early Scandinavian folklorist postulates that it was invented by Gypsies who stole milk and were looking for cover. This was in the nineteenth century, before Gypsies were reframed Roma, and later Protista.)
The exceedingly cool thing about these slime molds, which can be up to a foot or more in size, is that they are a single cell. A single cell with thousands of nuclei, all of which divide at the same time like it’s Spring Break. There’s one that weighs over forty pounds. And they can move, nearly an inch a day. They do this by motivating their internal pudding into little arms and legs, and follow their direction, seeking out the nutrients and proteins they need. Scientists have set up mazes for slime molds with dead-ends and rewards, and have discovered that although the slime mold goes every which way at first, it quickly deletes the trails that dead-end, by retracting those arms, and ultimately heads straight for the prize. Models of this behavior have been trotted out on a computer and the results have been shown to replicate the national highway system almost exactly.
Current slime mold research funded by the Heritage Foundation is dedicated to achieving the most efficient privatization of the prison and educational systems.
My sister and I used to torment our father’s girlfriend by walking her around the garden while speaking Latin. Our favorites included Dolichos lablab and Cimicifuga racemosa. Eventually she told us she would only take a garden walk if there was no Latin being spoken. So then we’d shout it at each other instead. Love you, sis!
Whoa. Did she deserve that? I’m sure she did.
You gots your slime molds and you gots your slugs, but have you ever found a giant terrestrial flatworm?
They tend to hang out in greenhouses and florist shops and come home with your garden purchases. Then they mostly look like limp strips of liver.
I did not know there were terrestrial flatworms and I’m not at all certain my life has been made better now, but probably.
Loved this. And usually one learns new stuff from your posts!
Most of my stuff is known by certain of my regular readers because that’s the kind of people I attract, but yes, most of us could use some fresh information!
. . .replicates the national highway system almost exactly. . .😆😆 🧡🧡
But that wasn’t my metaphor! They actually figured it out and the scientists state it just that way.
Orange. Slime mold. For some reason I expected this essay to end with a political observation.
Can’t imagine why.
[fingers in ears] la la la la la la
Kudos to the Heritage Society (motto: “we do so much to America”)! And Kudos to you for putting the Heritage Society at the end of your tale of Slime Molds!
It’s what got pooped out at the end.
Pisolithus tinctorius, the “dog turd” fungus grows all around the oaks here in Muddy Valley. Not a slime mold vomit mimic, it looks like it comes from the other end of the dog.
Used as a natural dye.
It’s the truest form of Dog Turd Brown, so that makes sense.
Pisolithus tinctorius, the “dog turd” fungus grows all around the oaks here in Muddy Valley. Not a slime mold vomit mimic, it looks like it comes from the other end of the dog.
Used as a natural dye.
Victor! I’ve got a post coming up about your frog. It IS your frog, right?
“some sort of excreta from an unwell animal” is very much like the way my favorite botany prof described slime molds — “like some small mammal was sick.”
BTW I could see a Roma being insulted by that remark near the end, but I’ll leave it to them to make the formal complaint.
You should leave that to them. You don’t want to appropriate.
Right. I complain enough as it is.
My son and I got ver excited at the Nature Pilgrimage used book sale to find a book on slime molds!
That apple didn’t slide too far from the tree, huh!
Yes….The blue girl.
I recently bought a book on slime molds to ID them. It had no color photos. I don’t know about you, but they all kind of look alike in black and white.
That is not a helpful book, but I’m cheered that you bought it. Your post is coming up soonish.
Fuligo septica sounds best if sung in an operatic voice.
Now I can’t hear it any other way.
I love each and every one of your sparky digressing. And yes, I did learn some more about biology.
But I swear to gawd that this slime mold picture looks suspiciously like the foam (or spuma) that comes on the top of a Starbucks salted caramel vente latte…
…and auto correct dutifully translated ‘snarky digressions’ into something else entirely…
And yet, I would long to be known for sparky digressings!
I loved “sparky digressions”! Also very glad I’m no longer partaking of Starbucks coffee, ’cause that image would surely have spoiled it for me but good!