I had forgotten just how small these things really were. It has been sometime since I have last looked for them up in the mountains, where there always seems to be sufficent moisture and humidity, conducive to the fruification of plasmodia. One of the many things I have learned from the study and observation of slime molds and from those observations of others, is that if possilbe try and not to disturb a plasmodium or it will never come to fruitification or sporulation. A couple of years ago, I brought a plasmodium home for observation. Keeping it in a moist and warm environment and feeding it oat flakes, it survived for around three months and then died, having never produced a single fruiting body. However it did on occasion get loose and slither around the table in search of other morsels, I think. They do make good short term pets, with no serious commitments and they do not bark at night nor have need of a litter box and they do not chew up your favorite shoes or the cork reel seat of your favorite 2 wt. flyrod. Here in the following photographs one can see the fruiting bodies and fruiting bodies being formed from an active plasmodium, which I left exactly where I found it.
The fruiting bodies which you see are around 3.0 mm in height and were found on a badly decaying piece of wood or tree branch, having fallen to the forest floor. Note the spherical bodies of the protoplasmic upheaval as the fruiting bodies are being formed. It is a wonder that I found them at all but they were in the same area as the Stemonitis that I posted earlier. The plasmodium here is much larger in area and fans out more than that of Stemonitis, if you compare the two. These fruiting bodies and the plasmodium were neatly hidden beneath the leaf litter covering the area. If one ever decides to look for myxomycetes, though some can be quite large, it is adviseable to think small, very small.
By the way, hats off to Graham Matthews for his post Slime mould: Lycogala terrestre. These myxos are fairly large and easily seen.
Arcyria w/plasmodium
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